shannon and i will be back in an hour. outnumbered starts right now. this is outnumbered. here with us today and today s hashtag one lucky guy, tv personality and veterans advocate, montel williams. he s back and outnumbered. welcome back. good to be back. it s great to see you. you guys have been firing up every day. as much as i can catch you, i catch you. that s nice. that s great. i want to make sure i m prepared if you ever did ask me back. that s what i said last time, too. just a couple of weeks ago with the release of sergeant and montel, you played a huge role on that and i think on behalf of everyone in the studio, thank you. thanks to all the fox viewers. were it not for you guys putting extra pressure on and believe me, the mexican government understood that. lawyers involved understood that but i just talked to andrew yesterday. this story is not over and i have to make sure america remembers, there s another 2,000, 3,000 andrews. they may not have been in jail but they re suffering. this young man is diagnosed with combat ptsd and now he truly is that s stockholm syndrome and we haven t had anybody treated for that in this country for 25 years. this man is sitting in limbo right now. i talked to him yesterday and i m trying to talk to him every day. a lot of marines are sending hope and help and we re trying to reach out to different the c.i.a. report despite word from a phone call from secretary of state john kerry to hold off. john kerry warning this is going to jeopardize men and women in the field now as well as relationships that we have with our allies. is this intelligence and this alleged torture tactic getting out? rock and a hard place. so sorry. this whole country is in between a rock and a hard place on this issue. we have to remember that we signed on to treaties years and years ago that said we wouldn t do certain things. i m not going to argue whether they were done or they weren t. what i m going to say is right now, we re sitting in a position where even administration, when we come back to the central issue, that central issue is, had this never happened, we wouldn t have to worry about releasing reports. let s just say one thing about this. those who would give up central liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. that s benjamin franklin. in the last hour we talked about the fact they puts people in imminent danger and that to him as someone who has been there, who has been in the field, who is so respected, that is illogical. it makes no sense. it s hard to ignore that opinion. i ve been in the field, too. these techniques have been stopped, these are techniques allegedly used in the bush administration so why now if they ve been stopped? i have some questions about that. i want to go straight to senator dianne feinstein, though, because she s exiting her role as the chairperson of the intel committee as you mentioned. it isn t just getting the report out. she s pushed against the white house because they wanted to redact 15% of it. she wants people to see what she had to say on the reported. i would ask, is this personal? why the timing now? the other part of this, though, and you talk about the general that i spoke to this morning. he said they didn t talk to one person who was doing the interrogating about this report. if they put it out there and it endangers us, is it worth it if it might not be as fact ral as it could be? brit hume called the timing of this inhe c ehe ca ehe ca eh inexplicable. they could be trying to get this off her desk or changing the narrative. the last time democrats were screaming about this, they were winning elections. they defeated tom delay s electoral map to take the house with this exact discussion. are they trying to return to that? i think so and i think the fear is that if it s delayed and she s no longer heading the committee, is this dropped altogether and then will she be held accountable by some members of community that you didn t handle this correctly? this is a promise, remember, barack obama has been talking about it for a long time. my key point is the justice department investigated this. they found no criminal charges. they filed no criminal charges. why are they doing this now? and the issue here, people keep saying this is the wrong time. they should delay this. when is it a good time to release it? never going to be a good time. look in the 1970 s. i talked to k.t. mc far mand mc farland right now. you had a similar situation and you also gutted the c.i.a. such that in the 1980 s for the first time, we saw people plotting in caves against us, ala al qaeda. her big question is not only about timing but when would a good time ever be? i remember one of the first things administration did when president obama came into office was pursue legal action for techniques. this is a return to that even though the techniques had been stopped. it makes you wonder, why now? united states has transferred six guantanamo bay detainees to uruguay. this is the largest grup to leave the prison since 2009 and the first to be resettled in south america. group includes four syrians, one palestinian and one tunisian. that brings the number of prisoners now hit at gtmo down to 136. once administration gets that number below 100, it s believed the president will push to bring the remaining detainees to a u.s. facility. i want to go on this one. this is a little different than what we saw with the birdall transfer. this is a release. former federal prosecutor was on earlier and he said there s no preconditions with this one. not like in qatar where they have to watch the detainees. they are free to go today, the he wants to make sure they understand at the end of this, he wants to get stuff done that he promised initially and he wasn t forgetting about them. i would take it a further step than that. it wasn t just a campaign promise. first week of his presidency in 2009 he signed an executive order to make this happen. so it was more than just i might get it done. i am going to get this done. it s 2014, almost the next year. 2015. it still hasn t been done yet. so my question, is this a slippery slope? are we looking at a situation where he s going to expedite the closing of gtmo and then how do we hold the other countries responsible and accountable for when these guys leave their soil and go do horrible things? and we get rid of the most dangerous. that was the concern with the birdall flop. they got rid of the most dangerous ones. you can almost justify, the really dangerous ones are out of there. low level offenders are not as big of a deal. no preconditions. they can walk today. why send them to a country that can t at least keep them on house arrest or monitor them? not saying qatarg to do a great job but i have no idea why the president thought he could do this. i get what you re saying by attempting to close this. it s impossible for him to close guantanamo bay in the next two years. it s not going to get done. here are six people they put back out in the field to go back to work. right. and they ll be heros when they return. with regard to other countries watching, if we couldn t keep up with the brothers who, you know, suspected of pulling off the boston bombing, if we couldn t do that on our own soil and we have an n.s.a. that it practically look at each naval on the couch, if we can t do it, why do we expect other countries to? it will be easier for him to end it if he doesn t acknowledge what they re doing. new questions about an explosion ive article on roll stone magazine that sparked demonstrations on one college camp us and shut down the greek system. now the magazine is apologizing for the story but how did the mainstream media get duped so easily? and you ve seen the protests in response to the recent grand jury decisions of the police killings. the law school is now allowing students to postpone their final exams if they feel traumatized by what happened. and right after the show, catch more from the couch on the web. join us for the famous outnumbered overtime by logging on to fox news.com/o news.com/outnumber news.com/outnumbered. comments, anything you would like to hear more about. fox news.com. out for a bike rid before you begin an aspirin regimen. that s the way i look at life. looking for something better. especially now that i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib, a type of irregular heartbeat, not caused by a heart valve problem. i was taking warfarin, but wondered if i kept digging, could i come up with something better. my doctor told me about eliquis. for three important reasons. one, in a clinical trial, eliquis was proven to reduce the risk of stroke better than warfarin. two, eliquis had less major bleeding than warfarin. and three, unlike warfarin, there s no routine blood testing. don t stop taking eliquis unless your doctor tells you to, as stopping increases your risk of having a stroke. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don t take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily and it may take longer than usual for any bleeding to stop. seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. those three important reasons are why eliquis is a better find for me. ask your doctor today if eliquis is right for you. information, there s discrepancy in the account and we ve come to the conclusion that the trust in her was misplaced. that sparked outrage from activists saying the magazine was blaming the victim. then rolling stone said given all the reports, however, we ve come to the conclusion we were mistaken in jackie s request to not contact the university. meantime, groups representing frats and sororities, urging u.v.a. to end the suspension of greek organizations saying it s hurt the reputation of students who had nothing to do with the allegations. this story has been incredible to me. how they released this without investigating it properly is beyond me. that s a whole other conversation about journalist. but at this point, the apology, which they ve just changed, is this enough? they originally blamed the victim and now they re saying it s our fault. rolling stone was had. they were had. big time. they re a mess. they re an absolute mess. we talked about the death of legitimate journalism on this couch. this is evidence of that. what rolling stone did by essentially being lazy and all too quick to jump to push this narrative of rape culture forward is it turned rape on a serious the worse thing a woman could go through into a national joke and trivialized this. i think this reporter, sabrina, should be fired immediately and never aa aa neverallowed to write again. the washington post said two of her friends were not consulted. they didn t even bother talking to the friends. the friends were asked last night if that was their account and they said, no. that s not what we said. what about the editors? where were the editors? i ve been a journalist for a long time. you never run a one source story. that was just incredible to me, especially on something so serious that is going to cause so much reaction. you know, if the reporter was sucked in and didn t want to check the sources, there should have been several editors saying if we re going to put the name of our may go sglen on the line and our reputation, we have to at least talk to the other side. i mean, this is honestly unheard of in journalism. i want to talk about the effect of this on sexual assault victims around the country. will this make them less likely to speak out or what is the effect on them? this is a problem that exists around the country. this is a real scary problem. we want people to feel comfortable coming forward. the fact we re asking a question, there s some woman sitting at home, if something happened to her last night, she s going, i m not going to pick up the phone. somebody s daughter feels that way right now listening to this discussion right here. now we re not judging the victim but judging whether or not the victim was telling the truth or whether or not i m not commenting on what we re talking about. i m just selling you, there s a girl at home who heard this conversation and said i m not going to say a word to anybody. and now she suffers in silence. what do we do? maybe change the narrative from one of whether or not, you know, rolling stone they got it wrong. they were wrong. and the public should let them know by not buying the may gazm. any young lady out here right now today, even listening to this conversation right here among four women, if you were abused yesterday, you have the right to come forward. skip the news report. go see somebody. go to the police. let s also talk about the fact that it s 2014, maybe 2015 and we still allow police departments, municipalities called university polices, police officers to investigate these crimes on campuses. these are people some of these people don t even have a job, have been university police officers for 15 years and that s the person who is going to investigate the rape of your daughter? never been in the field? i think a lot of these universities take this issue very seriously. a lot of them don t take it as seriously as they should. i think they feel a very, very huge amount of pressure from the white house and this administration to take it seriously and i think schools like u.v.a. to think that they did nothing about this. if the story was true, which it s not. i m not going to the story. i don t think there s women saying they re not going to come forward because of the conversation we re having right now. no. i disagree. i think rolling stone put someone out there who didn t have a credible story. it s rolling stone s fault that someone at home is having second thoughts about this. if you re going to come forward, you should come forward and you shoulding telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. what about the university here and what about these fraternities that have been tarnished that are saying we did nothing wrong and now we re labelled as x, y and z? what should they be doing? right now they re trying to get a repeal on the moratorium on them. they haven t been able to operate as they had been before the article came out. they re appealing the process with the university so i ve read as of yesterday, it hadn t been revolved yet so they could open their doors on the way they usually operate. a couple of things come to mind about this whole thing with the journalistic end of it. this young woman according to the two friends you mentioned and others that they ve since talked about because the washington post now talked with people, have said something happened that night and it may not have been the way that jackie said it did but they witnessed a change in her, that something happened. and that is my concern. that throughout this whole process, because rolling stone didn t do its due diligence, they didn t get to the truth. maybe she just simply couldn t tell it. maybe she was bad at telling it. she was drunk that night. whatever the situation is. but they fell down in two counts. not just in journalism but they let her down, too. the hope is that someone will get to the true story and it won t deter anyone who is suffer to go come forward. rolling stone is now fiction. you can categorize in the fiction section at libraries. protests not to indict white police officers in the deaths of black men turning violent over the weekend and it comes as a new poll think that relations between white and black communities have gotten worse since president obama was elected. is it really his fault? speaking of the grnd jury decisions, one of the top law schools in america letting students delay their finals if they re suffering, quote, trauma from all of this. is that any way to treat future lawyers, columbia? you re driving along, switch to liberty mutual insurance and you could save up to $423 dollars. call liberty mutual for a free quote today at see car insurance in a whole new light. liberty mutual insurance. california, police firing tear gas after they say protestors threw rocks and bottles at them. president obama addressed racism during his weekly address. watch. this something that is deeply rooted in our society, in our history but the two things that are going to allow us to solve it, number one, is the understanding that we have made progress and so it s important to recognize as painful as these incidents are, we can t equate what s happening now to what was happening 50 years ago. and from that interview, we go to this. a new poll finding 53% of adults say race relations have gotten worse since president obama took office in 2009. it s worth noting, 45% of blacks agreed with what you re looking at there. i want to go to you first. i really have one overarching question. we ve moved weeks beyond the first non indictment, grand jury non indictment that was ferguson, missouri and now we ve had a second here in new york city but we re talking days from that. what do people in the streets want? if you look at what happened in berkeley and oakland, those people weren t even out there because of this issue. lights start to get ba to where we should probably attempt to do this for the first time in reality in this country and have a real discussion about race. we don t do it. we keep pointing at our directions, believing our people and making sure that you have to be wrong and you have to be wrong. we can t even stop for a second and have a discussion. until we do, this is going to happen. it s going to get worse. again, this was occupy. remember, let s look at the faces. zoom in a little bit. about three weeks ago in ferguson, you saw a majority of black faces. now you see multi ethnic, multi facial. so again, the discussion is not about are we more racist today than yesterday? do we hate more black people today than yesterday? why don t we have a discussion about what s the problem? and discuss it. i think one of the bigs big problems is financial. it has to do with the federal reserve policy. the main thing that s increased has been the stock market. that s obl benefitted people who are wealthy enough to invest there. i think that the income gap has widened dramatically. this is what i m talking about. this is excuse. we will not talk about the problem. you don t think money is part of the problem? no. look. if money is the problem, how about the fact right now we have over 53% of congress that are millionaires plus and 28% are multi millionaires and 15 years ago we didn t have that. so what s going on in despairity in this country, maybe the people passing some laws don t give a damn about the people no matter what color they are. i think we re making the same point. i don t think we were disagreeing there. let s talk race. race is the problem. in this country right now today, there are certain cities where blacks stand a chance of being incarcerated at 100 times more than any other race. in this city alone. you bring up the point, though, and it s you don t think that s financially motivated either? you don t think it s about people trying to make money? money drives all these things. it s just a game. seems like the only time we talk about this is when people are rioting in the streets. correct. something right now the narrative has become, how many buildings are they going to burn rather than let s get back to the actual thing. if people are upset about the court system in the country, i don t hear anybody talking about that. the problem is when i was in the midst of these protests in new york, though, what i saw from a lot of people, people taking selfies, people partying. there was a segment of the population that protest just to protest and aren t really interested in having a discussion. it s easy to blame president obama for this but it s not his fault. this is a community based problem. it has to start at the dinner table, among families. disrespe there s the word. family. the breakdown of the family. this is not something that s just in the black community. the breakdown of the american family among whites, hispanics, go down the list. and i do agree with you on the money perspective but i think family and the breakdown of family is a huge part of a lot of this. that s a huge issue. as long as we don t talk about the issue, it won t get solved. we ll shift over to the alma mater. columbia university is allowing its law school students to postpone their final exam if they feel like they re taum tied by the eric garner and michael brown shootings. it may be too much for them to bear. i m dying here z. we have arranged to have a trauma specialist next monday and wednesday for anyone interested in participating to discuss the trauma that recent events may have caused. students who feel their performance on examinations will be sufficiently impaired due to the recent events may have a petition to have their examinations rescheduled. are you okay? i can see me walking up to my professor right now and saying, sir, last week a crane broke in the middle of the street and i can t study for my exam right now because i don t understand why that crane broke. i m trying to do the math and i m so traumatized. are you kidding me? i think that makes more sense. they are claiming they re going to build high powered attorneys out of this program. what lesson are they teaching kids at this level that you can cry if you don t like a decision? drop out and major basket weaving. don t defend me in court. i want to go back to something melissa said. it isn t white, black, brown. it s grown. the despairity in wealth and creating jobs is a big issue here. i would challenge the universities, rather than letting the kids off the hook, have them a way to create jobs in this country and give extra credit for the exams they want to miss. if you re a parent as well, wouldn t you be ticked off? you re paying like $60,000 a year to go to columbia and your kid is given a break. if anything, that f that were my major, i would be more empassioned. i would be more ready to go. turn my life over to you. and to your point, harris, be a little creative in you re a professor. go to the constructive end of semester final exam. isn t this why you get into law? because you want to go out there and forge ahead and make the right thing happen, whatever side you believe in this? it should make you want to get in there and dig deeper. not take a break because you re traumatized. by doing all of this, by setting the reading groups to formulate a response to the implications, they re saying we didn t like the decisions and columbia university should not put that out there in their classrooms. that s not for them to decide and not to dictate policy on. we have to go but some people are saying bah hum bug to a dazzling display of good lights in one neighborhood. you don t need to think about the energy that makes our lives possible. because we do. we re exxonmobil and powering the world responsibly is our job. because boiling an egg. isn t as simple as just boiling an egg. life takes energy. energy lives here. come from all walks of life. if you have high blood sugar, ask your doctor about farxiga. it s a different kind of medicine that works by removing some sugar from your body. along with diet and exercise, farxiga helps lower blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. with one pill a day, farxiga helps lower your a1c. and, although it s not a weight-loss or blood-pressure drug, farxiga may help you lose weight and may even lower blood pressure when used with certain diabetes medicines. do not take if allergic to farxiga or its ingredients. symptoms of a serious allergic reaction include rash, swelling or difficulty breathing or swallowing. if you have any of these symptoms, stop taking farxiga 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, low blood sugar,kidney problems, and increased bad cholesterol. common side effects include urinary tract infections, changes in urination, and runny nose. do the walk of life yeah, you do the walk of life need to lower your blood sugar? ask your doctor about farxiga and visit our website to learn how you may be able to get every month free. that makes sense. a santa s workshop and more. but despite all the joy, neighbors have complained about the traffic and the litter and the city reportedly says the so-called hyatt extreme christmas poses public safety concerns. but to some visitors, christmas wouldn t be the same without the annual display. we love to share this with our family and kids every year. what are some of your favorite things? the lights and the jesus scene over there. it is lovely but ladies and gentlemen, i have to say, 200,000 lights. they keep it all within their fence but there s a lot of people coming to look. the police say they re un un-bridled zeal. what a bunch of grinches. when i was a kid, i used to have my dad and my mom get in the car and drive around to see all the christmas lights. that was the highlight of my holiday season. if people want to have a go ahead time and you deal with extra traffic, it s the christmas season. smile and be gritful. a lot of people are driving around and around and around this house. the neighbors don t like t. police came up and set up a line so you have to walk to see it. then the family shoots back and they say, what about the disabled? what about people in wheelchairs? facebook some people are saying bah humbug. you should do with the cry baby neighbors instead. somebody else said, again, move in next to these people and watch strange men pee on your lawn. hello. whoa. there always was that house and i remember growing up, i remember the house and we always used to drive by it and it reminds me a lot of bob bickell s house. he does thousands and thousands of lights and because he s bob it s hard for me to remember. i can t imagine people i was there. there are no facilities outside. that s the problem. no bathrooms. i was right with you until you mentioned the bushes. i can feel for the neighbors. this is like the griswolds, though. how much does it cost to light that? i tried to look into it. because they have 200,000 light bulbs. it s got to cost a fortune but they made a lot of money because it s been featured on various shows. do they charge? i don t think they charge. they let people in but they ve made a lot of money off shows and other things. online somebody said, what does a ferris wheel have to do with christmas? why not? i think they have it in the north pole. i saw it on the north pole movies. there s always like teddy bears and stuff going around. i watched the movie. think about this, though. people next door, you have guys standing in the bushes. maybe it can be set up for certain hours. how about a viewing stand? i don t know. also concerns i remember back in our how many town that around the lights, people would smoke marijuana and drive by. all kinds of great christmas traditions. thank you for that, andrea. the expiration dates on happy marriages may be happier than you think. why the seven year itch is revised upwards. uh-oh. here s some news you may find surprising. another record high. today a bit of backsliding and new revelations about the giant hack attack on sony. dow is such a flirt. it is. jon scott, good to see you. thanks, harris. i may be outnumbered but now it s my turn for this story. watch this. marital bliss may last longer than you think. seven-year itch has been a popular theory since marilyn monroe starred in the same movie in 1955. she became the love interest of a married man and since then psychologists have said some women begin to hit the rocks after seven years as couples get the roving eyes. a new study finds that a 10-year itch is actually closer to the truth. i m going to throw it to you guys but i m in my seventh year of marriage and i couldn t be happier in my life. no itching? not itchy in the least. okay. one thing i liked in the study, it said that couples begin to bibbingary the 10 years but then hit a new crescendo at 15 years. i ve been marry 15d years because i got married when i was 12 and so i was like, rock on. i ve made it. like i m through to the other side. there you go. 10 years, is that when stress comes to hit? you have some munchkins running around, you re saving for college, working, have daycare, i m wondering if that s 10 years of all that s precious. we ll be in the 12th in april. when we hit the 10th year, it s like with your body every 10 years, you do a reassessment of the things that are working, not working and i think marriage is the same way. there s decade points when you really start to take stock of what s working and what s not. if you love each other, you work on those things. if not, just take separate vacations. now the body analogy, i keep thinking about the body and how it gets sage and wrinkly. what are you talking about? you have to work at it. marriage spanx. there we go. andrea, we have come up with something. marriage spanx. patent office? it s christmas time. how about we help everybody how to make their relationships a little better right now. i have a tip for you. write this on the refrigerators today and before you discuss, you have a conversation with your discuss, read these lines. speak without offending and the second one is listening without defending. if you have a conversation, getting ready to happen over the holidays, grab your spouse by the hand, walk to the kitchen, look at the card and go, okay. speak without offending. listen without defending. that can defuse any kind of argument because you never point anybody out. i want to build on your theme. my husband always says never email before breakfast. i have low blood sugar. if there s a contractor or somebody that needs to be talked to, he says please email phil before breakfast. i know what that means. but i have to have coffee and a little something in my stomach before i can speak without offending. for good marriages? or relation shis. are you married? no. but i m saying she s like not after this i m not. people get itchy after a year, two years. are you asking if i have a saying? yeah. do you know what rhymes with friday? vodka. that s what s on my refrigerator. goodness. i guess i could help that. that helps. back to the theory, montel, some have a theory you change so much. i m not the same person i was when i was 20. you look the same. thank you. you re a very kind woman. you also need glasses. what about the theory that says longivity is not possible? it s not realistic because partners change so much. try to embrace the change rather than look at it as something that s offensive to your relationship. i embrace every change my wife has and i m lacking forward to the ones she s going to have five years from now. hollywood romance movie. it s about the first couple. their first date. actress has already been picked to portray michelle obama but who will be cast to play a young barack obama in his days of courtship? 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he is denzilwashington. you are welcome. you could have said anything. i pick lance gross. you know him? he s most famous of playing calvin pa yne in tiler peri. i think he is really good looking. there is nothing wrong with that. you are yelling at me for den zil? come on! and he locks like it.
at today s sessions hearing. the equivalent of being made to go to the back of the bus. major holes in tillerson s sanctuary. were we lobbying before or against? i m a germaphobe, believe me. when all in starts right now. good evening from new york, i m chris hayes. there are just nine days until donald trump becomes president of the united states. today we were inundated with news, much of it disturbing, about what to expect when he takes office. in fact there was so much news today it is, frankly, impossible for us to fully cover what we saw and heard, which may well have been the point. we are going to aggressively cover the issues we have deemed most important and they are big ones. among them, the president-elect evoking nazi germany to characterize u.s. intelligence agencies, offering kind words to the russians who the intelligence community believe hacked the dnc and clinton campaign. trump s secretary of state pick exxonmobil ceo rex tillerson possibly lying under oath at his confirmation hearing about exxonmobil lobbying against russian sanctions and an impassioned and unprecedented plea from a sitting senator, cory booker, to reject trump s attorney general nominee senator jeff sessions over his record on civil rights. but we begin with the story we believe to be most important at this pivotal moment and what this day with as about. the nearly incomprehensible set of conflicts of interest that result from refusing to relinquish ownership of a multibillion dollar organizations that is engaged with businesses and countries around the world, the full scope of which we still don t know. that s because trump refuses to release his tax returns. well, i m not showing tax returns, as you know, they re under audit. reporter: every president since the 70s has had an irs. i ve never heard that. you know, the only ones who care about my tax returns are the prevented from doing so so there is no way of knowing whether they were genuine documents or just phony visual aids like the supposed trump steaks that trump showed off last march which turned out to have been purchased from a south florida meat company and still had the labels on them to prove it. to explain the steps he took, trump brought to the stage attorney sheri dillon whose lau firm won the 2016 law firm of the year. she said trump is not liquidating his assets because doing so could lead to unreasonable losses for trump and this is simply too high a burden. the approach we ve outlined today will avoid potential conflicts of interest or concerns regarding exploitation of the office of the presidency without imposing unnecessary and unreasonable losses on the president-elect and his family. that position prompted this response from the head of the office of government ethics independent trustee as oge has advised him to do. he did not deal with his emoluments clause problems, the unconstitutional flows of funds and other benefits from foreign governments and their agents. what he announced with his children is more like an ethics sieve, full of holes. so he gets f across the board. i should say that walter shaub gave a remarkable speech, we exerted some of it. he basically agreed with you, norm, this is not my area of expertise. mr. painter, what about the argument that was made explicitly by the president-elect s lawyer that forcing divestiture would essentially cost the president-elect too much money. that it would be too painful, too large, to unreasonable a financial sacrifice? well, in the bush administration as the chief ethics lawyer i worked with a lot of incoming cabinet officials who sold off assets and left money on the table, stock options and other money, and, yes, it cost them money to enter public service. i took a substantial pay cut to go work in the white house. that s what public service is all about. i am thrilled to have a president who has friends all over the world who will offer him $2 billion and so forth, that s great, but that s got to stop as of january 20. he s got to focus on being president and this is business is worth a lot to him but i m sure he could sell it off for a couple of million dollars which is plenty of money for him, but this government everyday spends more money than that business is probably worth and he is in charge of it as president of the united states. he s got to focus on his job and walter shaub s job at the office of government ethics is to advise government officials including the president on complying with a conflict of interest standard and walter is exactly right. there has been a political war against the office of government ethics this week conducted by super pacs and against walter in particular, trying to line him up for getting fired by the president or something like that and i have said this at the brookings institution this afternoon. if there s a saturday night massacre aatoge, we won t stand for that in the united states and we won t stand for a president who would tolerate that. this is an independent agency that implements ethics laws in the executive branch. walter shaub has a job to do and he is doing it and it s time for the president to focus on his job and to divest for those business enterprises instead of attacking the office of government ethics. i should note the saturday night massacre a reference to the attempted firing of key department of justice officials by richard nixon which essentially was the end of the end. well, they did fire them, they got down to robert bourque who would take care of the job for them. but that s not going to happen and we won t let that happen in this administration unless president trump wants to go the sa way nixon went. those are strong words and i want to talk about i ll let you you gentlemen referred to as a constitutional crisis, which you, ambassador, referred to. it bans emoluments for american officials. sheri dillon issued kind of fro from the bench her constitutional ruling, quite clear about what is and is not an an emolument. here s what she had to say. since president-elect trump some people want to define emoluments to cover routine business transactions like paying for hotel rooms. they prevent what the president-elect isn t aware of. these people are wrong. you re wrong ambassador is that correct? like many of her client s tweets and statements, it s tolly incorrect. the emoluments clause, it s a fancy 18th century word. all it s intended to say is that presidents of the united states cannot get cash and other benefits from foreign governments and you can understand why that would be a coern, how cane know if somebody s getting these $2 llion offers. right. let s say that came from a foreign government. we don t know if a foreign government was involved in that or not. how can we know they re doing what s in the best interest of the united states? the founders were very concerned about that. they put this in the constitution and donald trump is allowing all of that to continue. it s absolutely shocking. ambassador norm eisen and richard painter, gentlemen, you have been really, really helpful in understanding and navigating all this and i thank you for your time tonight. thank you, chris. still to come, filmmaker michael moore with his reaction to the slights, vendettas and unanswered questions from the president-elect s first press conference. as that press conference was going on, we got our first chance to hear trump s pick for secretary of state and his somewhat inconsistent views about russia. we ll dive into the rex tillerson hearing ahead. let me ask you this question is vladimir putin a war criminal? i would not use that term. well, let me describe the situation in aleppo and perhaps that will help you reach that conclusion. 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no, i didn t see anything that changed my mind. in fact, chris, i saw several things that deepened the concerns that we expressed about senator sessions, we ve been familiar with him since 1985 when lawyers at the naacp legal defense fund represented three civil rights activists, two of whom had been close friends of martin luther king who senator sessions prosecuted when he was u.s. attorney in alabama. they were acquitted but that prosecution had long-standing affects on that community in terms of intimidating black voters who were questioned by the fbi and who senator sessions allowed to be intimidated by members of his team. so we ve known him and his record for a long time. what i heard yesterday was in my view what is a very cynical effort to dismiss a record of over 40 years senator sessions has been a u.s. attorney, the attorney general of alabama for about two years and then the a united states senator and in that time we ve had an opportunity to see where he stands on a variety of civil rights issues. he was rejected, as you know, by the senate judiciary committee in 1986 when he sought to become a federal district judge because they found that the evidence of that prosecution and statements he was accused of making made him unsuited to be a federal district judge. yesterday he said he was wrongly characterized, you can find our report on our web site that starts looking not only from 1985 but up to this century and 2017, including during the campaign of president-elect trump where senator sessions was a close ally and was the first sitting senator to endorse president-elect trump. i want to talk about one specific area that i ve been following myself for a book i wrote and something you and i have spoken about, which is policing. particularly because this justice department under president obama i would say, particularly in the second term, has played a muscular role in the civil rights division in patterns and practices investigations of cities from chicago to cleveland to baltimore to ferguson and consent decrees that are federal efforts to reform policing externally for localities that have proven to be unable to do that for themselves. here s what senator sessions had to say about those consent decrees today. take a listen. it s a difficult thing for a city to be sued by the department of justice and to be told that your police department is systematically failing to serve the people of the state or the city. so that s an august responsibility of the dow jonat general and the department of justice so they often feel forced to agree to a consent decree just to remove that stigma. that was obviously yesterday. what do you make of that answer? well, i think you have to combine it with even more testimony yesterday, the fact he was endorsed by the fraternal order of police, there was a phalanx of law enforcement there to support him yesterday and the head of the fraternal order of police testified on his behalf today and they all essentially said the same thing, and what they said and what i heard out of the mouth of senator sessions is that he intends to be a champion of local police, that he does not believe the federal government through the department of justice should be intruding in local policing matters. he said specifically he thinks that too many people, including the department, are paintin entire place departments as being engaged in unconstitutional conduct when in fact it s just a few officers, a few bad apples, something we ve heard before. we he s a proponent of that view. he has been skeptical about consent decrees for many years, not just recently. but what we heard from him at this hearing makes me quite certain that senator sessions, if he is confirmed, will be taking a very different tack on policing reform. i do not expect pattern and practice investigations, i do not expect consent decree. i hope he will continue work of the cops office that works on retraining police departments but that remains to be seen. i was not encouraged by what i heard from his lips yesterday and what i heard today. as you know, local practices like in ferguson, it was the department of justice that discovered this kind of pyramid scheme that ferguson was running, it was department of justice that discovered unconstitutional policing in baltimore and we need to department of justice to be engaged in that activity. those patterns and practices report which is you can find on line are remarkable reading produced by that same department that the senator would be running, sherrilyn ifill, thank you for your time. thank you, chris. up next, nine days away from his inauguration, president-elect donald trump escalated his feud with his own intelligence agencies by and i m not making this up comparing them to nazis. that story after the short break. just thinking about it? 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[dad] alright, buddy, don t forget anything! [kid] i won t, dad. [captain rod] happy tuesday morning! captain rod here. it s pretty hairy out on the interstate.traffic is literally crawling, but there is some movement on the eastside overpass. getting word of another collision. [burke] it happened. december 14th, 2015. and we covered it. 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 trump referring to an unverified dossier containing embarrassing claims about his alleged ties to russia which was prepared by a third-party individual, not members of the intelligence community, and published not by the intelligence community but by buzzfeed news. that came after the president-elect opened his press conference with a broadside against american intelligence officials whom he blames for talking to the press. i want to thank a lot of the news organizations here today because they looked at that nonsense that was released by maybe the intelligence agencies, who knows but maybe the intelligence agencies which would be a tremendous blot on their record if they, in fact, did that, a tremendous blot. and in a particularly astonishing moment, frankly, the president-elect admitted openly to setting traps for the intelligence community in an attempt to find out whether they ve been leaking about his classified briefings. i said maybe it s my office. maybe my office. and what i did is i said i won t tell anybody, i m going to have a meeting and i won t tell anybody about my meeting with intelligence, nobody knew, not even ronne, my executive assistant for years. she didn t know. i didn t tell her. the meeting was had, the meeting was over, they left and immediately the word got out that i had a meeting. now based on the reporting over the past few weeks and admittedly it s a lot of anonymous sources and hard to make sense of it s clear at least a significant portion of the american intelligence apparatus appears to believe that the incoming president of the united states, their future boss is potentially the turned asset of a foreign adversary and at the same time that same man, the president-elect, seems to think that the intelligence apparatus is out to destroy him politically by staging a kind of soft coup. it s a recipe for a major constitutional crisis in the very near future. and the urinar. tell your doctor about your medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have a sudden decrease or loss of hearing or vision, or an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis. today for the first time. trump s response to the election hacks, the claims of ties between his inner circle and the kremlin and his general stance towards russia all make up at this point the single most controversial aspect of the president-elect s foreign policy. so it was fitting that today while trump was giving his press conference, his nominee for secretary of state, rex tillerson, was testifying in his first confirmation hearing on capitol hill. tillerson has had extensive contact with the russian government as the ceo of exxonmobil, even winning russia s order of friendship award in 2013 after making a half trillion deal with the government-owned oil company. asked about russia s role in the election, he sounded a somewhat different note than his would be boss. do you believe during the 2016 presidential campaign russia intelligence services directed a campaign of active measures involving the hacking of e-mails, the strategic leak of these e-mails, the use of internet trolls and the dissemination of fake news? i did read the interagency report released on january 6. that report clearly is troubling and indicates that all of the actions you just described were undertaken. senator bob menendez, a democrat, asked whether tillerson s responses reflect the views of the president-elect himself. i assume to some degree you ve had some discussion about what it is that that world view is going to be in order to understand whether you re willing to execute that on behalf of the person you re going to work for. in a broad construct in terms of the principles that are going to guide that, yes, sir. i would have thought russia would be at the top of that considering the actions taking place, is that did that not happen? that has not occurred yet, senator. that s pretty amazing. senator menendez asked tillerson about his company s history of opposing economic sanctions including those leveed against russia for its invasion of crimea. this was the response. first, i have never lobbied against sanctions personally. the company you directed did. to my knowledge exxon never lobbied against sanctions, not to my knowledge. new jersey senator bob menendez. shortly after that your colleague senator corker said mr. tillerson i believe you called me to lobby against sanctions. later in the committee meeting you then pulled out the lobbying disclosure forms that showed exxon had filed disclosure forms to lobby on sanctions. do you believe that mr. tillerson was being deceptive with you today? well, he was either avoiding the truth or his management style has got to be ofoncern as he seeks to head one of the biggest departments of the federal government, the state department, not only with its operations here but across the world. it s impossible to almost believe that you could spend and direct millions of dollars in bobbying activities as those reports that i submitted for the record show and not know that was happening and not know they were lobbying against sanctions. the second thing he said to me when i presented the evidence, he said to me well, it doesn t say whether we were lobbying for or against. in what world would he have lobbied for sanctions that would have hurt the bottom line of his company? so it clearly was at least not transparent and worrisome because if he really didn t know, how do you operate a large institution like the state department and what s your management style? he also exxonmobil responded saying let s be clear, we engaged with lawmakers to discuss sanction impacts, not whether or not sanctions should be opposed although that strikes me as a distinction without a difference if you come to a member s office and say this is going to hurt our bottom line you don t have to say that s why you should oppose it. absolutely. mr. tillerson said it was to seek information and guidance. well, you don t have to have a lobby disclosure form in order to seek information or guidance. you have a lobby disclosure form because you are taking a specific position for or against a specific piece of legislation or regulatory action. that thing about getting information is not tenable because you don t need to do that to file a disclosure form. they were clearly lobbying against sanctions on iran, russia and other iterations of those sanction regimes. so was this fundamentally deceptive? i asked at the beginning but he says he never personally lobbied then you have your colleague saying you called me. do you feel the answers he gave today were forthcoming and truthful? no, i have serious questions as to what he answered. on the whole sanctions regime, which is part of our limited arsenal of peaceful diplomacy tools so you don t have to go to war over disputes, he had it all over the place. he has a history of lobbying against it to exxonmobil then he says they can be powerful a powerful tool. and when i asked him today, without specifying with sanctions, do you not believe on the face of everything russia has done including trying to affect our own national presidential elections that additional sanctions should be called for and he wouldn t commit to that. so i have a real concern as to where he stands as it relates to that and other issues. all right, senator bob menendez, thank you for your time, appreciate it. thank you. still to come, today s press conference served as a stark reminder of the temperament of the incoming president. i ll talk about it with michael moore ahead. plus, a truly, truly bizarre thing 1, thing 2 that you have to see after this break. 90% of the world s largest supercomputers run on intel? 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well, four republican united states congressmen so far. last fridayepresentative duncan hunter of california was the first to snatch the painting, falsely claiming it depicts police officers as pigs and returning it to the office of missouri congressman lacey clay who represents the artist s district. yesterday morning representative clay and fellow members of the congressional black caucus returned the painting to its rightful place. clay even asked capital police to press charges against hunter but they declined. later tuesday, doug lam born was the second republican congress to just take the painting down with no authorization and, again, congressman clay had it returned to the gallery wall. before the end of the day, congressman dana or arohrabached brian ban bin removed it for a third time. as of this evening, the painting is back up but the fight continues. congressional republican staffer making it a top priority to request a review from the capital architect on whether the painting should be removed. and speaker paul ryan told members he will try to take it down to which congress a.m. black caucus chair cedric richmond responded if this is something speaker ryan thinks is one of his priorities in a new congress, to pick on an 18-year-old art student who only depict what is he sees in his community, then i just think that s sad. ritis, and you re talking to your doctor about your medication. this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain and protect my joints from further damage. this is humira helping me go further. humira works for many adults. it targets and helps to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira has been clinically studied for over 18 years. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. ready for a new chapter? talk to your rheumatologist. this is humira at work. lindsey graham. i ve been competing with him for a long time. he s going to crack that 1% barrier one day. i didn t realize lindsey graham s still at it. president-elect donald trump s performance in today s press conference served as a stark reminder he is still the same person he was during the election. as trump stands poised to become the president of the united states entering office with a 37% approval rating, he still seems most comfortable pursuing vendettas, responsing to slights and engaging to outright intimidation. while the president-elect couldn t resist a jab at former enemies like senator lindsey graham today, most of his it have vitriol was reserved for the people in the room. most of the media outlets are fake news. i could name them, but i won t bother. you have a few sitting in front of us. as far as buzzfeed which is a failing pile of garbage writing it, i think they ll suffer the consequences. they already are. i m not showing tax returns, they re under audit. reporter: every president since the 70s has had an audit. reporter: since you re attacking us, can you give us a question? mr. president-elect, since you are attacking not you. not you. reporter: can you give us a chance? your organization is terrible. i m not going to give you a question, i i can you state categorically you are fake news. that man not the man sitting down, the man standing up, is about to become the most powerful person in the world. i will ask filmmaker michael moore what that means for our democracy next. don t let the food you eat during the day haunt you at night. nexium 24hr. shuts down your stomach s active acid pumps. to stop the burn of frequent heartburn. all day and night. have we seen them before? banish the burn with nexium 24hr. we re not professional liathletes. .but that doesn t mean we re giving up. i m in this for me. for me. along with diet and exercise, farxiga 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 you 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. i m in this for my family. i m in this for me. ask your doctor about farxiga. .and learn how you can get it for free. so we know how to cover almost alanything.ything, even mer-mutts. (1940s aqua music) (burke) and we covered it, february third, twenty-sixteen. 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 for patients like lynn, advanced genomic testing may lead to other treatment options that can work. learn how genomic testing is changing the way we fight cancer at cancercenter.com/genomics well, first of all, i ll speak as a director, then, as a film director. it was a masterful performance, he owned the room, he owned the day, this should be very distressing to everyone. you think it was politically effective today? absolutely. especially for he and his side. as showmanship? as such i did this in my hold. take those same words you just showed you are fake news. put those words in nixon s mouth, it would have sounded like the paranoid that nixon was. put those words in george w. bush s mouth, you know, it would have sounded defensive like a little boy. this guy pulls that off and he pulls it off over and over and over again and confuses the situation with so much you don t know we don t have enough time here to deal with everything that was said and done but speaking as a director, once again, the props, the trump steaks were replaced by file folders that by the way, i don t know if this has been reported, they wouldn t let the reporters we did. one of our own reporters tried to look. yeah, because of course somebody went to staples and hour earlier. i don t know but that certainly is plausible. creatined this problem that looks like a law student s dorm room, you know? it really it s like obviously we ve thought this through and obviously we ve addressed the conflict of interest, just look at how many sheets of paper there are. just look at all this paper in an era where none of this is really on paper. so this is where now after this what happened today the threat against cnn and nbc has suffered the same sort of threat before. he attacked our reporter katy tur on multiples on occasions. absolutely. so now it s critical that the media do its job and do not be afraid, do not back down, do not try to because buzzfeed screwed up in some way because of the michael cohen thing, don t now not do your job because this clearly was something that wasn t vetted. so here s my you re referring to that dossier which circulated, published by buzzfeed that contained a bunch of unverified and possibly unverifiable, frankly, outlandish and lurid accusations. you could tell from the first moment that in a smart tactical sense they were going to attack the weakest point so that was distinct from the cnn report, right? but he conflate it had two very wisely, i thought, to attack them both and correct. and the main story, really, if you re a serious journalist, isn t the salacious prostitute stuff. it s the second point which is was there collusion between the trump campaign and any russians during the campaign? that s worthy of the investigation that apparently the fbi and others are doing right now. we should note jim acosta that was the question he was asking, can you state categorically it was dodged. acosta then said afterwards someone from abc asked that and the president-elect said no so i want to enter that in the record. here s my question to you. i have watched this play out in the transition period and what i ve noticed is this. donald trump ultimately became president-elect i think because he was able to profit off a forced choice between himself and hillary clinton and hick because of 30 years in the public eye because of different factors, he was able to say you may not like me but it s me or her. it strikes me he has replaced hillary clinton with the media. he is now running against the media. the scary part of that analogy is you have hillary who won but because of the democrats and who they are and the way they are she lost. well, she didn t win in the sense that she did not win the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president. well, let me put it a different way. if donald trump had won by three million popular votes things would have played out differently. what would be going on right now? i agree. in fact, he laid the ground work for it. correct. so play that out. so when you say the press has to be uncowed and i agree with you, my own personal perspective on this, they have to focus as much as possible which is very difficult to do, very difficult to do. yes, right because you re dealing with somebody with certain issues, we ll call it that just to who likes to pick a million fights. and says a million crazy things. he will in one moment say he believes russia did hack into the dnc and literally less than a minute later say i don t know. maybe not, maybe it was some other country. fortunately the 400 pound guy sitting on the bed has been left out of the discussion but it could be other countries. it could be other countries. so this is crazy time but it s so important. we re laughing about this but the media. they said this story has been floating around, did you hear it? i had heard word of it. i didn t read the dossier. but what i had read was david corn s piece based off this dossier. in terms of the first order of questions, i think you don t publish that dossier, that s my own personal feeling because you have to verify stuff that you publish. that s my feeling. no, that s correct. thank you. and as someone who i myself have had buzzfeed print things about me that aren t true so i now you re sounding trumpish. well, no, it s just the truth that this is where this is going to be the undoing of the press if they don t do what you just said, if that kind of serious journalism doesn t happen and and we should point out that nbc universal is an investor in buzzfeed. any time that s mentioned it should be said. yes. they are. so we should say here, though, that that the you re getting at the pay dirt here, what is the term he used? they appropriate this term, fake news. fake news is this term he s one of the founders of in the the obama era. he created the fake news of the barack obama is not a citizen. and he said that there was intelligence. that s right. he was called by a reputable source that there was intelligence. he himself was going to he was hiring investigators to support his fake news. he is the godfather of this deck ka decade s fake news. for him to say fake news well, this is a great point. as a person who launched his political career off of unverifiable and ultimately incorrect conspiratorial and frankly racist theories about the president s crypto kenyan birth and forged documents and all this stuff. and the fact that the way he deals with the sex thing is his defense is i m a germaphobe. he just admits it publicly on tv i m a germaphobe. like to him that takes care of any sex like sex is all dirty and germy. whatever. well that s what he used. this could have never happened. i won t get into the weeds. this couldn t have happened because i m a germaphobe and i know where they put the cameras in the hotel rooms, i have hotels. that was also fascinating. but the term fake news and what i found potent about that is describe this specific thing that happened during the election, you see it all the time, in your facebook feed, denzel washington endorses donald trump. that s jus not a true thing and the people that wrote that know it s not true. it s not even that important, frankly, but not true. he even tweeted i put out a movie against him called trumpland just before the election and he tweets thank you, michael moore, for putting out trumpland. and it s like i thought at the time he sees his name in the title. it s to a narcissist it s always a great thing to see you name. to be mentioned, yeah. but it s just but we re through the looking glass. he has appropriated this term to say it s a judo move where it s it s fake news. this was genius today. he pulled it off now we ll see if the press decides to back down or come back at him. and stay on the conflict story. and stay on the fact that he is a founder of fake news and that s and when he says things like over the weekend i was offered $2 billion. have you ever heard a president or president-elect ever say yeah, i just got offered $2 billion. and i have to say, i was happy for that moment because it was news, we didn t know that and it concretized precisely the conflict problem we have been trying to illustrate on this show. michael moore, thank you. and thank you and let me just
one point, two point and even. and i think we have a greater, a tremendous enthusiasm, much greater enthusiasm than she has. yesterday kellyanne conway acknowledged they were the underdogs. let s watch her. where do you see this race right now? do you acknowledge that you re behind? we are behind. she has some advantages like 66 million in ad buys just in the month of september. our advantage going in, we were behind 1, 3, 4 points in some states that mitt romney lost to obama. he will continue to take the case to the people. arguing with fox news decision desk over the results, throwing in the towel, for his party s candidate, let s watch him. if he plays it inside straight, he can get in. but i doubt he will be able to play it he has 186 electoral votes in states that he either leads outside of the margin of voters. i m not sure what is his strategy? saying he is going to win and polls are wrong or say he is getting screwed, polls are right. what is his strategy here? we re seeing two things happen here. donald trump i think is in one way trying to tell people that he is realizing that he is behind or that he wants to rile up his base and tell people, there s still time, we need to get this together. but there is another part of donald trump where he is in denial in some ways. he sees the same polls he would be talking about if he was winning and says now they are rigged and it goes to the idea of making a case that election is rigged and wants supporters to feel like if i lose it is not because of anything i did but really because the media and people who are rigging this election. yeah. he is really trying to be scientific about it or clinical. let me tell you how they rig it. they give more weighting to democrats when they are polled than to the potential republican voters. he is really getting into the science of polling and showing how it s being, according to him, rigged. i m not sure what the same time is, except the polls are rigged, elections are rigged, is that theme to get his people out? i think a theme to get his people out but i should say it is part of this him being angry at the system. yes he want his voters out and they are enthusiastic. i two say he is bright with that but then his supporters are very enthusiastic. there is a little bit of that going on. but he is really kind of the departing from the message of his campaign. kellyanne conway is trying to tweet out and do interviews where she says we understand we are behind. she wants people to understand they are serious presidential candidates and they understand what numbers are saying to them. donald trump is doing what he wants to do in this case. hugh, can you understand the strategy? public strategy? no, not really. i think it s important for him to focus on the obama care melt down, lead polsters to polling. if he wants to point to anything, point to tom cotton winning by 17% two years ago in arkansas and mitch mcconnell winning by 13%. nothing predicted to anything that close to that kind of landslide. i learned, trust the real clear politics average and campaign on the issues. what do you think was, i hate to take you down a rabbit hole you don t want to go down but why was the race underpolled? why was mitch mcconnell underpolled? i think state polling is more difficult than national polling. i ve tried to clear it up. the bigger the sample, the bigger it is to moddel a turn out. every six years on an off year is a real bust. but cotton won by 17 points. brad of politico pointed out to me the last poll showed him winning by 8 to 10. but three weeks out they thought it bass a dead heat and cotton wins by 17 point. it does give you some pause at polls. tad, i don t understand. two weeks to go in the polls, why doesn t trump say the following. if you like the way things are going, vote for the usual candidate, hillary clinton. if if you like wait we have uncontrolled immigration, vote for that. if you like the stupid wars, vote yes for that. if you vote for hillary clinton you re voting for the way things are and set up smartly instead of arguing about polling and crap like that. your thoughts? my thoughts because he is not a disciplined candidate. he doesn t care about the mechanics of campaigns. he doesn t stick to a message. this guy will say whatever wasn t to say if he thinks it serves his purposes at that moment. a twitter kind of form of communication be you know, i think he is trying to offer reassurance to supporters he is not out of it. but truth is he has fallen far behind. what do you think happened to him? the tape from 2005? what is it that broke his clans? i think the combination of number one, the debates where hillary clinton performed like a president. she dealt with him very effectively. number two, the tape released of him on the bus confirmed all of the suspicions that people had about him. particularly with women. that s why he is trailing. 20 point down in the abc poll with women right now. i think a combination of those events. trump went after the media today again saying we is looking out for working americans. i wish he would say, not that i want him to do it, but smart thing is to do it the right way. let s watch. the media isn t just against me. they re against all of you. that s really what they re against. they re not against me. they re against what we represent. the media is entitled, condescending and even contemptuous of the people who don t share their elitist views. and this is all for money. for money largely. money and power. i see you and i hear you. i am your voice. let me go to hugh on that. what do you make on the argument he represent the regular folks out there and the media represent the elite and why would the media, a lot of media are ivy leaguers and you might say the intellectual elite, i don t think that s what i would brag about but they are some of them. why is the media pro elite according to him? give me the motivation. you re on that side of thinking, i want to hear the smart way of saying it mp. thank you. to quote kissinger, it has the benefit of being true. 90% of manhattan elites will vote for hillary clinton and applaud her reelection. that is what dan rather said. news is where you look. those elites look for news in places other than for example the obama care premium hikes or the problems that the fbi. these are stories where if donald trump were making a comprehensive case, it goes back to nixon, you know this chris, an old saw and true saw in the republican cannon that you don t get a fair shake. but you got to deal with it by focussing on issues, not on the problem of bias. you think that s true? do you think that s true? i look at joe biden, he s not elite. i look at bobby of pennsylvania, i don t think he is elite. i look at toomey, he is not elite. who are the elite in the media? give me the names. if we ask people like donald trump or people like bernie sanders, they are both going after some of the same people. talking about the new york times. about the washington post. and really this is something i think that is kind of an effective argument because people do feel when they go and get the news that they are really getting it from these people who have some sort of plan to rig this election or rig the economy or don t want to cover the real issues. when the media is covering the news of the day and what we think is important. there are value judgments. do you know anyone that new york times is pro life? that s an question i m going to answer. i have no idea. do you know anybody? you don t have to name names. do you know anybody i have not asked my coworker that question, i should say. that s cute. i want to say one thing. that s the way you make your point. go ahead. sorry. this idea of, i was talking it a trump supporters today and he said that he felt that donald trump was what he called a blue collar billionaire. that s the first time i heard that term. people believe he is the voice for them and i think that s something that is really powerful and that could be an issue that he could continue to talk about if he wasn t talking about suing his sexual assault accusers. i m going back to you and to. some people like him. he is a sinatra guy. but he acts like a little guy who got to be a big guy. your thoughts? he doesn t sound like that. the language that he uses. but that clip you just played of trump, taking it directly off the teleprompter. very effective. a powerful message. trump s problem is he stops going off the teleprompter. he goes gettysburg to make this address and says he is suing all of the women talking against him. this is stupid and selfish. democrats trying hard to win control of the senate. they are hoping to switch red to blue in pennsylvania. the battle for the senate series. this is hard ball, the place for politics. ntly, 1954 mercedes-be granprix race car politics. and now, anotherercedz makes history sellin at jusover $30,000. and to think this one tually has a surround-sound stereo. the 2016la. lease e cla250 for $299 a l mercedes-bz dealer. mercedesenz. the be. jess: hey look, it s those guys.[musi] shawn: look at those pearly. 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[music] [pole ren] jess: how many did you have? awn: i should be fine. jess: you should be? officer: sir, go ahead and step ouof t vehicle for me. shaw yes, sir. today, shawn s got a hearing, we llee how it goes. good luck! so, it tur out buzzed driving and drundriving, they re thsame thi and it cos. so not wth it. until one youlips a food truck. then your rates go tough the roof. cident fgiveness for driversh liberty mutual insance. lead over challenger katy mcbegin they. pennsylvania trended democratic in recent elections but one thing toomey has for him in history, splitting tickets three times since 19 t92 when specter was voted in and then presidential candidate bill clinton. re-electing rick santorum to the senate and then al gore for president. re-electing specter that time by throwing democrats to john kerry for president. things changed. in 2000 democrats had 500,000 votes advantage and today they have rough lay million voters advantage in registration. toomey has to contend with the coat tails of hillary clinton who leads by 6 points and with challenges facing party s nominee donald trump. over the weekend clinton took on actually the incumbent senator directly. send katie mcginty on behalf of pennsylvania to the united states senate. she is running against someone who refuses to stand up to donald trump. how much does he have to hear or to see? and their first debate on television, toomey has yet to say who he will vote for. whether or not would vote for trump was pressed by the moderator and mcginty to show his choice. as leader in your party, yes or no, do you support as in will you vote for and encourage others to vote for your presidential nominee. because katie is so extremely partisan she can t grasp the idea that someone might have trouble with candidate in their own party. i do. on the other hand i know if he were president would he probably sign legislation that would be constructive. i tell you, waiting to be persuaded is political speak for waiting for the next poll. but again the senators the only person in the united states of america who has not levelled with his constituents on the simple question. are you voting for donald trump? i ll yield the balance of my time back to the senator so he can now answer that question. we will move on. senator one last go at this. will you disclose to your constituents and other voters how you vote before the election? at some point i probably will. moderator sound like me. a few days later toomey acknowledged he is in a tough spot. i am still in the same mode i was monday night which is feeling stuck. feeling stuck. politicians don t usually say that. guys sees democratic strategist and head of the pro clinton super pac. we know what predicament is. two kind of voters who could vote for toomey. those for trump and republicans not for trump. two groups of voters. you knock one group, the other group may not like you and reverse the same thing. hard it keep both republicans groups happy. politically it is a tough spot, no question for that. for pat toomey, good senator focus owned policy, he is torn between hillary clinton who he hates, doesn t think she would be a good president and trump who he also doesn t like. he has been up front about trump s outrageous policies and statements. pat toomey has a good record. partisan achievement on gun control and other things and i think that s why he is leading despite distraction eats the top of the ticket is throwing at him. last yes on the very front. do pennsylvania voters still believe there is such a thing as east coast republican? a jack heinz republican? do they think there are republicanes who not right wingers they would feel comfortable voting for especially in the burbs? i think so. and that is pat toomey. one of the most bipartisan senators in the senate. whether you agree or not. worked with west virginia on common sense solution to background checks. worked to keep child sex predators out of school. worked to clear up the backlog at v.a. he is someone who has a record of achievement. that s why he is leading right now in a challenging year over all for republicans. guy, democrats have told me but pennsylvania democrats at the very top level told me toomey is shrewd and coming out for background checks with his partner from west virginia a dell considerate that he has done just enough on guns not to defend the nra and therefore win in the burbs, what do you think? i think you illustrated it perfectly. not only when it comes to trump but when it comes to guns he is trying to have it both wayes. democrats have done a good job on pushing back on the narrative in part by using toomey s own words about being a friend and reliable vote for the nra and point you to the fact that he is how is he different than casey, democratic senator from pennsylvania on guns? on guns? yeah. how is he different? sure. there is a couple of things. if you look at assault weapons, still issues there in terms of him disclosing what he believes. he also says according to the nra, opposing supreme court justices in part because of their view of the second amendment and supports grup donald trump and that is the heart on the just to delineate, he is different than the popular incumbent democratic senator on guns. they vote for background checks. right. but on assault weapons ban, on limit on ammunition, vietnam for supreme court justice based on the second amendment which the nra score chess is why most democrats almost always get an f even if they are mildly supportive and in terms of their support of donald trump. thank you, guys. when we return, my election diary for tonight, october 24th with just 15 days to go. this is hardball , the place for politics. see your lexus deale if youavrate to sere ulcerative colitis or crohn s, anyour symptoms have left you th the same view, it may be time for a different perspeive. if other treatments haven t woed well enough, ask your doctoabout entyvio, the only bioloc developed and approved just for uc and crohn s. envio wos by focusg rited in the gi-tract to help control damaging inflammation and is cnically proven to begin helping many pients infusionnd serious allgicef as reacons ression. can happenurinor after trtment. entyo may increase risofinfect which can be seriousus while not reported with entyvio, pml, a re, serioubrain infectiocaused by a virus may be possible. tell your door if you have infection, exrience fquent infectns, or he flli symoms,you have or sores.n, liver problems can occ entio. if yr uc or crohs medicaon isn t rkinfor yo ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio. entyvio.elieand remissio within reach announcer: the test you. but hover loud the loudness gets. however many cheese puffs may fly. you re the drier. the one in control. stand fm. just wait. a move only whe you hear the click thatays they re buckled in for the drive. never give up till they buckle member when you said men are suriyeah.e? yeah, then how d i get thi.. .allste sa driving bos chk? member when you said men are suriyeah.e? ..nlallstate sds you a bonus chk yeah, then how d i get thi.. for evy six months you . silence. it s good to be in, good hands. we can t go back to the years of devastating cuts to public education. so vote yes on prop 55. prop 55 prevents $4 billion in new education cuts, without raising taxes on anyone, and with strict accountability. budget forecasts show if we don t pass prop 55 big cuts that hurt our kids are coming, and california will suffer budget deficits all over again. so vote yes on 55. because it helps our children thrive. with the perpetual investigation of the probe of democrats. you see it in the president s big push of senate candidates wherever he goes. he doesn t want just a mandate for hillary. he wants whopper. then baghdad bob said this isn t true. he was the guy broadcasting from the iraqi capital as the u.s. troops arrived to take over the city. today the die hard voice coming from the republican presidential campaign is that of the candidates himself. baghdad bob, meet donald trump. that s hardball for now. join us tomorrow 7:00 p.m. eastern. see you then. usin00 pois fr my asink ca i boughtveggies.it. anherbs needed to create a pop-up pick-your-own ice ba in the middle ofhe city, so nowveryone knows. we he some of thfresst injuice in tn.ofhe city, see what the powerf potscan d. learn more at chase.com/ink see what the powerf potscan d. t whening tough choices. jim! y re in! but when you hav high blood pressure and need cold medine that wks fast, the choice isimple. coricidin hbp is the onlbrand that gives powerful cold symptom relief without raraing your blood pressure. con hbp. tmom didn t want anotr dog.g. she said it s too much work. lulu hair just floats. uhh help me! 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replacement in sight. repeal and replace is going great. and racial bias, excessive force and reckless shootings. today s doj report on the chicago police department when all in starts right now. good evening from new york, i m chris hayes. there is just one week to go until donald trump becomes the president of the united states. he has not even taken office yet and already trump is historically unpopular. his transition, arguably clouded by more serious scandals and controversy than all eight years of the obama administration combined. as questions mount about the circumstances of trump s election and his alleged ties to a foreign adversary. democrats appear to be reaching a breaking point. in an interview with chuck todd, georgia congressman, civil rights icon john lewis became the first to declare openly what i believe many lawmakers have until now only suggested. i don t see this president-elect as a legitimate president. you do not consider him a legitimate president? why is that? i think the russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of hillary clinton. i don t plan to attend the inauguration. it will be the first one that i missince i ve be miss since i ve been in the congress. you cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong. that s going to send a big message to a lot of people in this country that you don t believe he s a legitimate president. i think there was a conspiracy on the part of the russians and others to help him get elected. that s not right. that s not fair. that s not an open democratic process. those are remarkable words given the moral authority and democratic witness that john lewis bore throughout his life. late today, the senate intelligence committee, of course, chaired by a republican, announced a bipartisan inquiry into the intelligence community s unanimous conclusion about russian s interference in the election including the criminal political hacking and the committee plans to interview senior officials of both the outgoing and incoming administrations, including the issuance of subpoenas if necessary to compel testimony. that s one of the shadows hanging over trump s transition to the presidency. until this week he rejected the findings of america s intelligence professionals choosing to pick an ugly fight with people he ll have to rely on as president. as early as this morning, the president-elect was still attacking the intelligence community while seeming to take russia at its word. he tweeted totally made up facts by sleaze bag political operatives, both democrats and republicans, fake news. russia says nothing exists, probably released by the intelligence, even knowing there is no proof and never will be. my people will have a full report on hacking within 90 days. trump was referring to the unverified dossier summarized in classified briefings to both the president and the president-elect. the dossier includes allegations the russian government possesses compromising material about trump and that trump team and the russian government exchange information during the presidential campaign. there is no evidence the dossier was leaked by the intelligence community. it was floating around a number of places prior to being published. trump categorically denies the allegations contained in the dossier but director of national intelligence james clapper says the intelligence community hasn t made any judgment that the information in that document is reliable. then there s the controversy surrounding fbi director james comey and his decision to publicly disclose information about the bureau s probe of hillary clinton s e-mail server including the now infamous letter to congress 11 days before the election. there is mounting evidence the letter did significant damage to clinton s chances and the fbi s conduct is the subject of an investigation by the u.s. inspector general that comes amid multiple reports that at the same time the fbi was investigating clinton it was also investigating the trump campaign for ties to russia. those reports haven t been independently confirmed by nbc news. at a senate hearing this week, comey was asked if the fbi was examining potential ties between trump s team and the russian government. has the fbi investigated these reported relationships and, if so what are the agency s findings? thank you, senator. i would never comment on investigations, whether we have one or not, in an open forum like this. did you answer senator widen s question that there is an investigation under way as to connections between either of the political campaigns and the russians? i didn t say one way or another. especially in a public forum. we never confirm or deny a pending investigation. democrats frustration with fbi director comey finally boiled over this morning after a classified house briefing on russia s alleged hacking. congressman tim wolz said i was non-judgmental until the last 15 minutes. some of these things that are revealed, my confidence has been shook. congressman markcatanho, i m very angry. congressman ted lew tweeted for members of congress who attended a classified intel briefing today, i reiterate my call that you demand donald trump tell the truth. reporters asked congresswoman maxine waters about what happened? reporter: congresswoman, can you tell us anything about the discussion? no, it s classified and we can t tell you anything. all i can tell you is the fbi director has no credibility. well, then. joining me now congressman tim walz, democrat from minnesota. do you share your colleague s assessment that the fbi director has no credibility? well, i have deep concerns, chris. i went in there listening and trying to find out. this is a serious attack on our democracy. that s at the heart of the story. we have a foreign power who attempted to undermine our most sacred institution of an election and i wanted to find out what happewas happening dur that time. i have a lot of questions that needed to be answered and the handling first and foremost of what the russians did, how it influenced our election, we can find that out. that s critical. it doesn t matter if you re a donald trump supporter or not, you want to know that, what have they done? the bigger question is were they handled are they handling these investigations equally. are they doing according to their operating proceed your on when they talk about it and don t? my frustration came nothing classified about it when it became apparent they were not handled the same way and that s incredibly frustrating because not just because of the election and the election results, it undermines the american people s faith in the non-partisan nature of our critical intelligence and that s what came out in there. i want to be clear on this and obviously i m respectful of the fact you re dealing with a classified briefing and would not want to talk about things but the source of the frustration is what you believe is a double standard or a poorly applied standard with respect to different campaigns and how possible investigations are discussed? yes. and i think that s a possibility until today that wasn t apparent to me. now it s gng to so you learned that today. yofelt like that was confirmed to you today that your fears about a double standard or a poorly applied one were confirmed? if they weren t confirmed i have serious doubts, my confidence was shook. i ve been asking for a more in-depth investigation into this as my ranking members and elijah cummings has. we need to know that. but, yesterday, coming out of there i don t think what should have been simple answers were not answered in a simple manner. the danger of this, chris, is again of undermining the public s credibility in this. i know those who say well, you re just upset with the election. in my district, chris, hillary clinton got 38%. she was not going to win that in there whether the russians hacked it or not, but that s not the point. the point is that they are no doubt they were involved. there s no doubt we have more to learn on that. but how we as members of congress and how the american public found out about that versus the e-mail situation does not seem to me to be consistent and i think that s real trouble and that s not in a defense of hillary clinton s use of e-mail which is i said all along needed to be looked at. so let me ask you this. given everything you ve told me i wonder how you whether you share the assessment of your colleague john lewis who said today on the record chuck todd is that he did not feel this president is legitimate. do you agree? do you think this president is not legitimate? no, i don t agree at this time and john lewis is an icon, i respect him greatly. he is shook on this, too. i would say i need to see more. i respect that next friday when we have an inauguration we will have president trump will be my president and as i said yesterday when he makes a good decision like his v.a. appointment of dr. shulkin i ll praise him on that. when he s not i ll work on trying to find common ground but at stake here is there s more to be learned and we can t be stonewalled on this and my fear is that the person who tells me with that information and i make my judgments on, i have a deep concern about now and that s why that was so damaging to me. since i ve been up here over the last decade, this was the most troubling to me in terms of what i had been led and the expectations and how that turned out and that s why we need more information. congressman tim walz, thank you. thanks, chris. i m joined by congresswoman barbara lee, democrat from california. my understanding is like john lewis you are not going to the inauguration. i wonder, do you agree with congressman lewis? do you view this president as not legitimate ? chris, let me first of all say i believe in the peaceful transfer of power and the office of the presidency. but when you look at the flawed process and russian interference in our election and when you look at what has taken place in terms of our democratic ideals, our processes, i have to applaud congressman john lewis because once john lewis says they are flawed or illegitimate, the elections were illegitimate or this is an illegitimate president, people have to pause and think about this because congress lewis is a moral leader, a civil and human rights icon and he did not make that decision lightly. i think the facts need to be laid out. we have a bipartisan commission, legislation led to really set up a commission to investigate this so when you look at what has taken place i have to say john lewis is right on target in terms of how this president-elect was elected and the interference and what took place as a result of these elections. even the fbi in terms of their bias and how they conducted these investigations, what was made public, what was not made public. people can decide for themselves but there are so many problems with what took place until once again congressman john lewis needs to be applauded. were you in that briefing today, congresswoman? yes, i was. did you share the it was sort of a fascinating scene afterwards. democrat after democrat coming out saying in very strong words how frustrated angered, how many questions they have. was that your feeling coming out of that as well? chris, i was angry. i wasn t frustrated because the facts leading up to today were very clear to me but when you d are in a classified briefing of course we can t disclose what we learned but my reaction was one of anger, i was very i would say upset with the fact that the american people need to have the facts made public. we need some transparency and we need this investigation so the public will know exactly what took place. so you feel there are important there are important things for the public to know that they can not or do not know at this moment? i think it s important for an investigation to be conducted that is public and, of course, there are going to be some issues that will be classified that cannot be disclosed but i think for the most part we need the bipartisan commission which the house is i think all democrats are on the legislation. we need that so the public will know exactly what took place and make their own decisions about the outcome of this election. all right, congresswoman barbara lee, thanks for joining me, appreciate it. up next, the trump transition is now admitting to nbc news that michael flynn spoke to russia s ambassador on the day the obama administration sanctioned russia for interfering in our election. the latest that have two-minute break. it s beautiful. was it a hard place to get to? (laughs) it wasn t too bad. with the chase mobile app, jimmy chin can master depositing his hard earned checks in a snap. easy to use chase technology for whatever you re trying to master. when you hit 300,000 miles. or here, when you walked away without a scratch. maybe it was the day your baby came home. or maybe the day you realized your baby was not a baby anymore. every subaru is built to earn your trust. because we know what you re trusting us with. subaru. kelley blue book s most trusted brand. and best overall brand. love. it s what makes a subaru, a subaru. amid mounting questions about potential leaks between donald trump, his inner circle and the russian government came this post from david ignatius from the washington post which seemed to be a remarkable revelation. according to a senior u.s. official, trump s pick for national security advisor, michael flynn, phoned the russian ambassador several times december 29, that would be the same day the obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking during the election. that report was followed up today by another from the associated press again citing contact on that day, the 29th, again sourced to a single senior official who may or may not have been the same person, we don t know. on a routine call with reporters this morning, transition spokesperson sean spicer offered a simple explanation. christmas day general flynn reached out to the ambassador and sent him a text and it said, you know, i want to wish you and merry christmas and a happy new year. the ambassador texted him back wishing him a merry christmas as well and then spently subseque the 28th of december texted him and said i d like to give you a call, may i? he took the call on the 29th and the call centered around the logistics of setting up a call with the president of russia and the elect after he was sworn in. this all seems completely innocent, above board. but there was something a bit peculiar i noticed about spicer s account. you note he cited two dates when flynn supposedly had contact, december 25 christmas day and december 28 but the white house announced new sanctions in response to russia s election sbe feer interference, december 29. that s the day that was alleged in the column. did flynn talk that day or not? this morning team trump told the post s david ignatius the only happened on the 25th and 28th the latter to off condolences for a plane crash. but then in afternoon nbc news producer vaughan hilliard caught up with spicer and he admitted there was a phone call on the 29th. reporter: on the 29th, the same day the u.s. expelled russian democrats and then a day later vladimir putin said he wouldn t push out american diplomats in russia. did general flynn have any conversations to indicate to the russian ambassador that the u.s. trump administration would either ease or roll back sanctions? the only conversation general flynn had was, one, to wish him merry christmas, two, to express his sympathies for the loss of life during the plane crash and to commit to establishing a call after the inauguration between the two leaders. obviously that choir plane crash was tragic and we know the trump team loves to say merry christmas but how many times can you call and text the same russian ambassador? joining me now msnbc terrorism analyst malcolm nantz and matt taibbi author of the book insane clown president. let me start with you matt and then go to you, malcolm. here s an example of the kind of thing we re dealing with. the facts are unclear and in dispute, they seem to move back and forth. there is at one level a totally innocent explanation. there s some business that has to happen between an incoming transition and the russian ambassador but then there s some weird documents around it. and you wrote this piece yesterday saying some line about how we going to get something more important than what we re flying through right now? there are two completely different narratives. there s one where basically the russians let s just say i mean the people that i talked to have a high degree of confidence they were involved with the hacking of the dnc e-mails and passing it on to wikileaks as well but there s a version where they do that and trump is basically the idiotic moronic beneficiary and wasn t involved in a conspiracy with the russians. we don t have any hard evidence that there s more than that. the thing of which there s the most evidence is the first order thing that they hacked it for whatever reason to sow discontent because they like trump, they hated hillary clinton. they want to sow division in the united states which all great power countries do. we do it. this would be an extraordinary episode but certainly there s no evidence that i ve seen that there s this other element where it s a manchurian candidate, there s a plot and that would be an order of magnitude much larger. and malcolm, i believe you are a you worked obviously in the intelligence community for years, you wrote a book about russia s involvement in this election and you are a believer large largely but what is the evidence there is aside we have this dossier but we can t verify any of it? i like to say this because matt s a great journalist and i love his work but matt is a journalist, i m an intelligence officer. i look at things differently. there is no such thing as coincidence in my world. coincidence takes a lot of planning. everything that happened with regards to that hack took place in an organized bubble that indicated there was a very large information warfare management cell being run by russian intelligence. all of the leaks came out precisely to support everything donald trump said within 24 to 48 hours he talks about pennsylvania, every pennsylvania dossier comes out. he talks about florida, every florida dossier comes out. when that wasn t flowing fast enough, d.c. leaks came out. all of this was on the basis of the systematic release of intelligence and that s what intelligence agencies do. here s the issue to me, malcolm. i hear you and i ve talked to intelligence people who keep saying the same things which that you have not been trained, you are not seeing the puzzle pieces fit together the way we have and i respect that. but the standard part of the problem we re dealing with is standards of different. so standard of public domain to say to someone, you know, matt, that this person is a foreign agent essentially or colluding, that is a very heavy thing to sate about a person, particularly the incoming president of the united states. what should the journalistic standards be? right now all we can say is there are people who believe that. that s what we can report is that there are people in the intelligence community who have apparently have indications that lead them to believe that but we haven t seen anything that allows us to say unequivocally that x and y happened last year. all we can say is there are analyses that show that they were probably behind the hack. so the question, malcolm, to you becomes can you imagine a world in which an unclassified version of evidence could be produced through a bipartisan investigation of some kind that could be entered into the public record that could make some determination that meets a standards for amateurs? for citizens? for democratic citizens in a nation who want to know what the heck is going on? sure. so long as we re not talking about the original hacking of the dnc. that evidence is unkwif kabl, on the internet, a company called crowdstrike did the analysis and saw the data being stolen. the question is about these links possibly with the trump team, the trump administration, that data i think you re probably never going to see the cia s report which was parallel written, published on the same day i published and came out with the same conclusions. you re not going to see that. after next week you ll never see that. but our allied nations this is the super bowl of intelligence crises. part of the problem is that it seems to me if this sort of attrition through leak the you think the leaks we are getting are coming from the intelligence community? no, i don t think a lot of them are coming from the intelligence community. especially with regards to that dossier that dossier had been out there for months. i spoke to david corn. but you have to understand, my book came out four months ago and it was unclassified. it didn t have anything to do with it. so the media takes longer to catch up because you have the two rule verification and things like that and information the just leaking out now about what we can see sort of nefarious, may have parameters leading towards sinister and questionable enough to demand investigation to determine if any of these people have links to moscow. the only thing i feel definitive about is there has to be an official commission in which things are systematically declassified, investigated and presented in some fashion we don t make democratic determinations and immediate determinations based on leaks and counterleaks. malcolm nantz and matt taibbi, thank you. coming up, as the ethical concerns pile up around trump and his cabinet nominees, how are the republicans responding? that story coming up. and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have a sudden decrease or loss of hearing or vision, or an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis. a body without proper footd needssupport can mean pain. the dr. scholl s kiosk maps your feet and recommends our custom fit orthotic to stabilize your foundation and relieve foot, knee or lower back pain from being on your feet. dr. scholl s. one of the very first things house republicans did when they came to work last week was to vote to gut the independent ethics office that polices their conduct. it seemed like a weird foot to get off on for a party that won the election with a promise from the nominee to drain the swamp. after a public uproar, the house gop beat a tactical retreat and promised to revisit the matter later in the term. it turns out it was just getting started. despite warnings from ethics watchdogs, despite past practice, republicans scheduled senate hearings for donald trump s cabinet picks even though several were yet to complete the background checks and ethics clearances that are customarily required. then there s trump s pick to head the department of health and human services, representative tom price who the wall street journal reports traded more than $300,000 in shares of health-related companies over the past four years while sponsoring and advocating legislation that could potentially affect those company stocks. today came reports that price got a sweetheart deal from a foreign biotech firm that could earn him a million dollars. trump, meanwhile, held a press conference on wednesday where he defied calls by bipartisan ethics watchdogs to divest or place his assets in a blind trust saying instead he would hand his business over to his sons, a relatively meaningless step that he nonetheless presented as a benevolent gesture. i could actually run my business. i could actually run my business and run government at the same time. i don t like the way that looks but i would be able to do that if i wanted to. trump s stance did not it is well with the director of the office of government ethics, walter shaub, and now republicans are responding to shaub s objections with a no so vailed threat, not against the president-elect, rather against the ethics watchdog trying to ensure he doesn t violate the constitution. jason chaffetz and the gop s ethical bullying on ethics next. . 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[burke] it happened. december 14th, 2015. and we covered it. 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 has been a struggle. i considered all my options with my doctor, who recommended once-daily toujeo®. now i m on the path to better blood sugar control. toujeo® is a long-acting insulin from the makers of lantus®. it releases slowly, providing consistent insulin levels for a full 24 hours, proven full 24-hour blood sugar control, and significant a1c reduction. and along with toujeo®, i m eating better and moving more. toujeo® is a long-acting, man-made insulin 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. allergic reaction may occur and may be life threatening. don t reuse needles or share insulin pens, even if the needle has been changed. the most common side effect is low blood sugar, which can be serious and life threatening. it may cause shaking, sweating, fast heartbeat, and blurred vision. check your blood sugar levels daily while using toujeo®. injection site reactions may occur. don t change your dose or type of insulin without talking to your doctor. tell your doctor if you take other medicines and about all your medical conditions. insulins, including toujeo®, in combination with tzds (thiazolidinediones) may cause serious side effects like heart failure that can lead to death, even if you ve never had heart failure before. don t dilute or mix toujeo® with other insulins or solutions as it may not work as intended and you may lose blood sugar control, which could be serious. toujeo® helps me stay on track with my blood sugar. ask your doctor about toujeo®. but my back pain was making it hard to sleep and open up on time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. now i m back. aleve pm for a better am. and they re absolutely right. they say that it s hot. when really, it s scorching. and while some may say the desert is desolate. we prefer secluded. what is the desert? it s absolutely what you need right now. absolutely scottsdale. a. i wish circumstances were different and i didn t feel the need to make public remarks today. you don t hear about ethics when things are going well. you ve been hearing a lot about ethics lately. walter shaub, director of u.s. government ethics delivered a speech decrying the steps donald trump has taken or not taken, he got a letter from gop representative jason chaffetz chair of the house oversight and government reform chairman who earlier this week vowed to continue his investigation into hillary clinton s e-mails. now chaffetz s letter was not a show of support to a fellow ethics watchdog, it was instead a threat. chaffetz accusing shaub of blurring the line between public relations and official ethics guidance hinting he may investigate shaub for speaking out about trump s conflict of interest. chaffetz, who demanded shaub appear for a closed-door interview cited a tweet storm from november in which shaub told trump oge is delighted you ve decided to divest your businesses, right decision. trump has done nothing of the sort but he s apparently done enough for chaffetz. it seems to me donald trump is bending over backwards to do everything he can but he has to abide by the law and he s exempt from most of these conflicts of interest so i thought it was very premature of the office of government ethics to be in the spin room saying hey, i hate this. democrats including chuck schumer responded to chaffetz letter with outright. mr. chaffetz s attempt to bully mr. shaub out of doing his job are absolutely despicable. joining me now, senator jeff merckly from oregon, do you share chuck schumer s asse assessment? this is a crazy situation. first the house tries to get rid of the office on day one then they attack the independent office of government ethics charged with making sure the conflicts of interests are eliminated for the president and people who are nominated for cabinet posts. boy the president himself held a press conference to say how much he was doing and it turned out his plan was as phony as his photo problems. he had these folders piled up saying these are the contracts i m going to divest but they wouldn t let the reporters look at them because they had blank paper in them and the plan was to put his sons in control of the business. does not eliminate the conflicts of interest. here s my question at a brass tacks level. the office of government ethics is an independent body. a fixed i believe five year term, the head of that walter sha shaub. what does the senate or congress do when day one donald trump fires him? he can t fire him on day one because of it being a five-year term but i must say it will be very very disturbing for a president to put someone in that office who isn t a professional committed to enforcing ethics laws and will make certainly make a lot of noise about it and consider where whether there s some kind of legislation we can pass that puts boundaries in place to back it up. what do you make of congressman chaffetz has carved out a role for himself in the house, the oversight committee. the idea behind the oversight commit see the a deep constitutional idea, the tension between article one and article two branches of the united states government that congress over sees the executive. do you feel that he is does he sound faith to feel that role as he talks about what s going on now? the best way to get the house republicans to attack something is put the label ethics on it. so it s not really it s oversight to try to destroyer sight. it s really unfortunate that they re not taking ethics seriously and it s happening on the senate side where they re trying to ram through nominees without getting the standard ethics report that mitch mcconnell himself demanded for president obama s nominees in 2009. are you confident all of those ethics clearances will happen before i know some of the hearings have been postponed. it did seem that was a mini battle the democrats in some senses won in so far as a bunch of those hearings have been postponed? it seems like we ve made some progress but i wouldn t declare victory yet because the challenge, for example, with devod devos is a vast challenge and she hasn t even submitted the paperwork yet. is the leadership going to say well she hasn t submitted the paperwork and we don t have the divestment plan but still we want her in the job and try to push it through? they may well do so and we ll try to stop it. devos, of course, nominated for secretary of education who is a billionaire, comes from a fantastically wealthy family, huge amounts of holdings and would have to go through a process she would have to go through a process that s insisted upon by law in a way donald trump wouldn t which is that she won t have any option, right, to pass over the family business to her kids or something, she has to divest and put in the a blind trust? this is that is the standard absolutely and by the way this should be the standard for the president and it s when we are pushing him to divest, we re doing him a big favor because when you own a lot of property it s very easy to be in violation of the constitution s emolument clause because all someone has to do is give you a sweetheart deal and there s thousands of deals his corporation is doing and you re in violation. senator jeff merkley, thank you for your time. you re welcome. still ahead, growing questions about republican plans to gut obamacare as repealed a vances in the house. plus, a quick check in on rudy giuliani is tonight s thing 1 thing 2 and that starts right after this break. liberty mutual stood with me when i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. liberty did what? 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(sigh) i wish my insurance company had that. wait! hold it. hold it boys. there s supposed to be three of you. where s your brother? where s your brother? hey, where s charlie? charlie?! you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you. liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance i m phil mickelson, pro golfer. my psoriatic arthritis caused joint pain. just like my moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. and i was worried about joint damage. my doctor said joint pain from ra. can be a sign of existing joint damage. that could only get worse. he prescribed enbrel to help relieve pain and help stop further damage. enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal, events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma, other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders, and allergic reactions have occurred. tell your doctor if you ve been someplace where fungal infections are common or if you re prone to infections, have cuts or sores, have had hepatitis b, have been treated for. heart failure, or if you have persistent. fever, bruising, bleeding, or paleness. don t start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. joint pain and damage. can go side by side. ask how enbrel can help relieve joint pain and help stop joint damage. enbrel, the number one rheumatologist-prescribed biologic. people would ask me that we traveled,ntries what is your nationality and i would always answer hispanic. so when i got my ancestry dna results it was a shocker. i m from all nations. it puts a hunger in your heart to want to know more. wearing the hats, speaking super super emphatically at the republican national convention, even vociferously defending trump after release of that infamous access hollywood tape in which trump boasted of sexual assault. giuliani and trump were bosom buddies from way back and trump s surprise win, giuliani was well positioned. the only question was which top cabinet post was he going to get? the choice for secretary of state in a trump administration is down to rudy giuliani and john bolton. john would be a very good choice. is there anybody better? maybe me, i don t know. [ laughter ] he was reported to be a top candidate for secretary of state until he got passed over claiming he took his own name out of contention, then attorney general. there s probably that knows the justice department better than me, giuliani said at the time. but he didn t get that job, either. the former mayor receded back into whatever he was doing before he jumped on the trump bandwagon but now rudy giuliani has been given a job kind of in the trump administration. what s he going to do? well, i d tell you to check out his web site for a hint during the break but that s part of the problem. thing 2 in 60 seconds. does psoriasis ever get in the way of a touching moment? if you have moderate to severe psoriasis, you can embrace the chance of completely clear skin with taltz. taltz is proven to give you a chance at completely clear skin. with taltz, up to 90% of patients had a significant improvement of their psoriasis plaques. in fact, 4 out of 10 even achieved completely clear skin. do not use if you are allergic to taltz. before starting you should be checked for tuberculosis. taltz may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you are being treated for an infection or have symptoms. or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. inflammatory bowel disease can happen with taltz. including worsening of symptoms. serious allergic reactions can occur. now s your chance at completely clear skin. just ask your doctor about taltz. so rudy giuliani, one of the earliest, biggest most stalwart supporters of candidate trump who seemed to be shoveled aside by president-elect trump has been now finally given an assignment. if you missed the big announcement at trump tower yesterday we ll play it for you now. basically i ll read you a little of the press release. president-elect trump is very pleased to announce former mayor rudy giuliani will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend coordinating private sector cyber security problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector. so some cyber stuff. a role so diminished as the new york times described it, giuliani will from time to time hold meets with mr. trump. giuliani has his own consulting firm so this appears to be a nice had the president of the united states want to impress executives looking for a firm. it s an upgrade from the current situation. if any executives went looking for his firm today, this is what they find. his web sites have down all day after a report from gizmo doe that the security site is insecure as hell was using outdated free software and failed to follow even the most basic of security precautions that would be obvious to the most casual student of cyber security. companies in the country. after expanding our fiber network coast to coast. these are the places we call home. we are centurylink. we believe in the power of the digital world. the power to connect. and that s what drives us everyday. still trying to find how ara good site.going? they all.want.to. charge me. have you tried credit karma? credit karma doesn t do taxes. does credit karma do taxes? yeah, and they re totally free, so they ll never take any of your refund. oooh, credit karma.huh? we. probably still want those. yeah, good call. file your taxes for free with credit karma tax. friend when officers drove up, shined a light on him and ordered him to freeze because he had been fidgeting with his waistband. the man ran. the officers fired 45 rounds, including 28 rifle rounds, several rounds struck the man, killing him. officers found no gun on the man, however officers reported recovering a handgun nearly one block away. the gun recovered in the vicinity was determined to be fully loaded an inoperable and forensic testing determined there was no gunshot residue on the man s hands. chicago s independent police review authority, or ipra, which we have talked about on the show before, found the actions of the officers justified. this was not uncommon according to the report. in many of these cases, ipra generally accepted the officers versions of events which were later undercut by video evidence. another one, in one case officers justified using force by claiming a woman attacked them but in the video officers can be seen aggressively grabbing the woman, throwing her to the ground and surrounding her. after she s handcuffed, one officer tells another to tase her ten effing times. officers call her an animal, threaten to kill her and her family and scream i ll put you in a u.p.s. box and send you back toer the f you came from. officers can then be seen discovering a recording device and discussing whether they can take it. those officers didn t face any discipline until after the woman came forward with the surveillance video. justice department investigation also found routinely abusive behavior within the cpd, especially towards black and latino residents of chicago s most challenged neighborhoods. one officer said he referred co-workers and supervisors refer to black individuals as monkeys, animals, savages and pieces of excrement. it s a 13-month investigation by the u.s. department of justice, 160 pages long in which the federal government corroborates what people and reporters, frankly, in the most marginalized neighborhoods of chicago have been saying for years. and now, because of that report, the city of chicago has promised to reform the police department. we ll see how that goes. but all this comes because this justice department under this president has aggressively pushed for reform and investigated city departments. the man donald trump wants to put in charge of the justice department has a very different take. jeff sessions has criticized government lawsuits that force police reforms. so the question before us now is whether the next report into the next department like chicago ever even happen? 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(avo) ask about namzaric today. over the past 24 hours, house speaker paul ryan has been working around the clock to repeal the affordable care act as soon as possible. he led a successful vote, mostly on party lines, on the first step toward repealing the health care law through the budget process. he defended republican plans for repealing the aca to a man whose life was saved by the law. i was a republican and i worked for the reagan and bush campaigns. at 49 i was given six weeks to live with a very curable type of cancer. thanks to the affordable care act, i m standing here today alive. why would you repeal the affordable care act without a replacement? i would encourage you to go to our web site and take a look at our plan. ryan went on to talk about a number of policy ideas from high-risk pools to greater reliance on health savings accounts but if you took him up to go to the house speaker web site and looked at their plan, you d find four bullet points promising to reduce cost, shore up medicare with a link to a pdf which restates the same abstract and vague promises. after seven years of obamacare, more than 60 attempts to repeal it, thousands of campaign run against it across the country, that is the cutting edge of the republican alternative right now four bullet points. so what are the millions of people who ve gained coverage thanks to the affordable care act supposed to do while they watch this unfold? joining me now, former director of communications of outreach for hillary clinton jess macintosh and the author of overcoming obamacare, three approaches to reversing the government takeover of health care. phil, i want to start with you. obviously there are plans out there. lamar alexander talked about a plan, tom price who has been nominated for hhs but it s somewhat striking to me that all this time they didn t they knew this was coming. the fact there s not a plan saying, no, this is what we re going to do, not only that it was absent from the campaign. if you go back to 08, you can say obamacare you don t like it, you don t like the principles, but it was intensely litigated. you had a good sense of what the contours were going to be. i have no idea. the problem always has been not that there aren t any republican plans, there have been many, paul ryan himself when he wasn t in leadership released one, tom price had one, there s a number of different plans but republicans have never been able to agree on a single one and now that s coming back to haunt them. there s also the problem, it strikes me, jess, that not only do they not agree in congress, donald trump has made a lot of promises, he s talked about out-of-pocket costs. he wrote a book calling for single payer. do you think they can square the promises they ve made? i don t think they ll be able to do that. i think the republicans in the house and senate have made repealing obamacare a huge part of their agenda for years now. donald trump is new to this game. he doesn t the issue. he clearly doesn t understand the koun tours and what will be the controversial pieces of it and he seems to have no interest in working with the congressional republicans that will have to do the heavy lifting here. i hope they remember we started president obama s presidency by picking up this health care fight. it was not easy. the president spent enormous political capital getting this done because he believed not just in a set of principles but in how to do it and he worked with senate democrats to get it done. part of the reason it wasn t easy, easy, philip, is people don t like the status quo bias. people didn t like it then, they don t like it now, but i think a lot of people do like it that have gotten care. but change is scary. you ve written about the fact republicans are not being particularly honest about what their principles are which is yes some people are going to lose their coverage. absolutely. one argument i ve made is that republicans should avoid the same mistake as president obama. when he was selling the health care law as you said one of the problems was this status quo bias. people were worried about how it would disrupt their health insurance so he over and over again repeated the infamous talking point about if you like your plan you can keep it and you re not going to lose your das even though you know that and any intellectually honest liberal health care expert at the time would say look, if you re making major changes to the health care system it will disrupt some people s care. some people will lose coverage and he could have made the argument but ultimately the overall system will be better but he made these big promises and when the obvious happened and people lost their coverage and doctor networks got narrowed on all these changes disrupted a lot of people it was a huge problem for him and that s one of the big reasons why republicans have been able to capitalize and i d argue now control the congress and perhaps the presidency as a result of obamacare. and these broken promises. now republicans are also, i think, boxing themselves in the corner by making a lot of contradictory promises that won t actually bear out and i think that they should just be more honest and defend, which i think is a defensible position, repealing obamacare and replacing it with a market-based system. that gentleman that spoke to paul ryan last night, it strikes me he s a particular cancer and he was a former republican whatever but there s millions of people that are going to kind of discover they re in the cross hairs who may not have been activated for this fight before the election but may get activated afterwards. for sure. we re starting with only 18% wanting to repeal obamacare. you don t get to 18% with republican unity by any stretch of the imagination. there are a number of people, we ve seen it all over the internet as they ve picked up this fight, people saying well, i m on the aca, repeal obamacare, that s terrible, many i health care will be fine. they don t realize the aca and obamacare and whether that s the media s fault, the president s fault, whoever s fault, these people will know real fast that the obamacare is the aca and that s how they get their coverage. so if we re starting at a number this low, republicans are not offering people anything. they are simply saying repeal as if there is a mandate to repeal, as if people see repeal as something being done for them. there s a repeal to change. as opposed to being done to them. obama made it through this because he was offering more health care to people. i don t know what trump or the congressional republicans are going to be offering. very good point. philip klein, jess mcintosh, thank you for your time. before we go, one last special segment. both my kids are here and we have a house rule, they get to request any animal video they want when they re here. for my daughter, there s the black panther.
best practices within the ihs system itself and shared those and incense vized the ability to move that kind of activity that is providing high-quality care for individuals in that system, in certain areas, and making certain that we re able to extend that across the country in the ihs. okay. we look forward to working with you on that. i think best practices is a good place to start. obviously, those have not been employed in a lot of facilities in our state. in 2009, cms issued a final rule that required all outpatient therapeutic services to be provided under direct supervision every year since then. the rule has been delayed. either administratively or legislatively in small and rural hospitals. i shared this with you as well. in my statement we have a lot of critical access hospitals, rural areas, big geography to cover, and sometimes difficult to get providers out to these areas. so, the question is, if confirmed, will you work to charge of some of these issues in a way that removes that power from washington, d.c., where i think too many of the problems have been happening. thank you, mr. chairman. look forward to it. senator casey. thank you, mr. chairman. dr. price, good to be with you again. thank you. i want to ask you a couple questions that center principally on children and individuals with disabilities. first with regard to children, i think if we re doing the right thing, as not only as government but as a society, if we re really about the business of justice, and if we re really about the business of growing the economy, we should invest a lot and spend a lot making sure every child has health care. the good news, despite a lot of years of not getting to that point, not moving in the right direction, the good news is, we made a lot of progress. the urban institute in an april 2016 report, i won t ask i won t ask the report to be made part of the record, but i ll read a line from this urban institute report. uninsurance among children 1997 to 2015 dated april 2016, says as follows on page 3, it said that the decline in children s uninsurance rate occurred at a relatively steady pace and includes a significant drop following implementation of the affordable care act s key coverage provisions from 7.1% in 2013 to 4.8% in 2015, unquote. so, that s a significant drought. 7.1 to 4.8 is millions of kids have health insurance today that would not have it absent the affordable care act, including the medicaid provisions as well. that 4.8% uninsured rate is at an all-time low. that means we re at a 98% insured rate across the country able to commit to us today, that that that the number of uninsured children will not increase under your during your time as secretary for ywer to be confirmed and the number of uninsured would not increase? our goal it is to decrease the number of uninsured population under age 18 and over age 18. i hope you maintain that because i think that s going to be critically important. the reason i ask that question is not just to validate that as a critically important goal for the nation, but it s your answer seems to be contrary or in conflict with what you have advocated for as a member of the house of representatives, not only in your individual capacity but as chairman of the budget committee. looking at now for reference a an op-ed by gene spurling. with regard to with regard to your policies, the effect of what your policies would be, and now apparently contrary to what was said during the kaernlgs it s now the policy of the trump administration to block grant medicaid? with respect to both you and to mr. spurling, it s because you all are looking at this in a silo. we don t look at it in a silo. we believe it is possible to imagine, in fact, put in place, a system that allows for greater coverage for individuals. as a matter of fact, coverage that actually equals care. right now many of those individuals the aca actually increased coverage in this country. it s one of the things that it actually did. the problem is, is that a lot of folks have coverage but they don t have care. so, they ve got the insurance card. they go to the doctor. the doctor says, this is what we believe you need and they say, i m sorry a cut of $1 trillion, a combined cut of $1 trillion that would adversely impact the children s health insurance program and the medicaid program is totally unacceptable i think to most americans, democrat, republican or otherwise. you re looking at that in a silo. you aren t looking at that in what reform and improvement would be. we re look at the rebuttal in not just what gene spurling said but a whole line of public policy, advocates and experts. and i think the burden for you, sir, is to make sure you fulfill your commitment to make sure no children will lose health insurance coverage while you are secretary. look forward to working with you. senator hiller. thank you, mr. chairman. dr. price, thank you for being here today. thanks for your patience in working with us throughout this confirmation process. if you can put your mike on. it is on. i ll lean a little forward. mr. chairman, as you can imagine, i committed to ensuring that all have access to quality and affordable health care insurance. i have a letter from nevada legislature, directly from our majority leader of the state senate and our speaker of the assembly. and they re good questions. five questions. obviously, they want to get the same answers that all of us want here. we have a nevada 88,000 nevadans who have health insurance through the exchange. 77,000 nevadans eligible for federal tax credits. 217,000 nevadans that receive health care coverage under expansion. basic questions. mr. chairman, if i may, can i submit these questions to the record, on the record, and also if i may ask dr. price if he would respond to this particular letter, to these legislators. again, i think they re very good question. without objection. also if i may add f you could cc the governor also. i think the governor would also like answers to these questions. i think you re in a great position to answer these particular questions. thank you, sir. thank you. if i may, can i get your opinion on the cadillac tax? i think the cadillac tax is is one that has made it such that individuals who are gaining their coverage through their employer there may be a better way to make if so that individuals gaining their coverage through their employer are able to gain access to the kind of coverage they desire. the cadillac tax would affect about 1.3 million nevadans. school teachers, union members, senior citizens. and there s some disagreement as to whether or not these individuals are wealthy or not. there are some on this committee that believe the $1.1 trillion tax increase in obamacare does not affect the middle class. do you agree with that? i think it does affect middle class. i do, too. do you believe school teachers are wealthy? everybody has their own metric of what wealthy is and some people use things to determine what wealth that aren t the greenbacks i would argue most school teachers don t think they re wealthy. do you think most union members are wealthy? i doubt they think they re wealthy. yeah, i would agree with that. do you think most senior citizens are wealthy? most senior citizens are on a fixed income. they would argue they re not wealthy. that s my argument on this particular tax. in fact, obamacare as a whole is it s another middle class tax increase of $1.1 trillion. my i guess my question and question for you is, is that if i can get your commitment to work with this committee, work with myself to end and the treasury secretary to repeal the cadillac tax? well, we ll certainly work to make certain those who gain their coverage through their employer have the access to the highest quality care and coverage possible in a way that makes the most sense for individuals from a financial standpoint as well. does the cadillac tax make the most sense? as i mentioned, i think there are other options that may work better. do you believe it is an increase, health insurance increase, to middle class america? i do. okay. i want to go to medicaid expansion for just a minute. nevada was one of 36 states that chose to expand eligibility for medicaid. we went from iveng the enrollment went from 350,000 to over 600,000. and i guess the concern, and i think it s part of the letter that i gave to the chairman, is whether or not that will have an impact. what we re going to do to see that those individuals aren t impacted. probably the biggest question we have for you here today is what are we going to do about those that are part of the medicaid expansion and how that s going to impact them? yeah, again, as i mentioned to a question on the other side, i believe this is a policy question that needs to be worked out through both the house and the senate. we look forward to working with you and others, if i m able to be confirmed, and making certain that individuals who are currently covered through medicaid expansion either retain that coverage or in some way have coverage through a different vehicle. but every single individual ought to be able to have access to coverage. dr. price, thank you. thank you for being here. thank you. senator warner. thank you, mr. chairman. good to see you again, dr. price. thank you. let me start on something we discussed in my office. one. issues i ve been working on since i ve been governor, working very closely with your friend senator isaacson is the issue of how we as americans address the end of life and those issues. i think we both shared personal stories on that subject. senator isaacson and i have legislation that is called the care planning act that does not remove anyone s choices. it simply allows families to have those discussions with their health care provider and religious/faith leader if needed or desired in a way to prepare for that stage of life. this year cms took a step by introducing a payment into the fee schedule to provide initial reimbursement for providers to have these conversations with others. this is mentioned in a multidisciplinary case team. it also ran a pilot program that allowed hospice-type benefits to be given to individuals who were still receiving some level of curative services called the medicare choice medicare care choices. i believe it s very important that we don t go backwards on these issues. i think we talked about, maybe the only industrial nation in the world that hasn t had this kind of adult conversation about this part of life. again, not about limiting anyone s choices, but would you if you re confirmed, would you continue to work with senator isaacson and i on this very important issue? i look forward to doing so. and not be part of any effort to roll back those efforts that cms have already taken? i think it s important to take a look at the broad array of issues. one issue is liability. i can t remember if we discussed that in your office. the whole issue of liability surrounding these conversations is real. we need to talk about it openly, honestly and work together to try to find a solution to just that. i would concur with that. but i also think this is something that more families need to take advantage of. on friday, january 20th, the president president trump issued an executive order th that that says federal agencies, especially hhs, should do everything they can to, quote, eliminate any fiscal burden of any state on any state or any cost fee, tax penalty or regulatory burden on individuals and providers. dr. price, if you re confirmed in this position, will you use this will you use this executive order in any way to try to cut back on implementation or following the individual mandate before there is a replacement plan in place? well, i think that if i m if i m confirmed, then i m humble enough to appreciate and understand that i don t have all the answers and that the people at the department have incredible knowledge and an expertise. and that my first action within the department itself, as it relates to this, is to gain that insight, gain that information, so that whatever decisions we can make with you and with governors and others can be the most informed and intelligent decision possible. i m not sure you answered my question. i just what i would not want to see happen, as we take i understand your concerns with the cadillac tax. i know there are concerns about you and others have raised about the individual mandate. there are some that are concerned about the income tax surcharges. it s just remarkable to me, and this is one of the reasons i think so many of us are anxious to see your replacement plan, that the president has said we want insurance for everybody. he wants to keep prohibitions on pre-existing condition, keep people on policies until 26. it seems like there s at the same time a rush to eliminate all of the things that pay for the ability to have for americans to have those kind of services. and i would just want your assurance that you wouldn t use this executive order prior to a legal replacement to eliminate the individual mandate, which i would believe helps shore up the cost coverage and the shifting of costs that are required in an insurance system. yeah, i a replacement, a reform, an improvement of the program, i believe, is imperative to be instituted simultaneously or at a time in you will not use this executive order as a reason to, in effect, bypass the law prior to replacement in place? our commitment is to carry out the law of the land. in these last couple minutes i want to go on. i know you ve been in the past a strong critic of the center for medicare and medicaid and innovation of cmmi. i believe in your testimony last week, you saw great promise in it. to me f we re going to move towards a system that emphasizes quality of care rather than simply quantity of care, we ve got to have this kind of experimentation. there s one such program, the diabetes prevention program. that last year cms certified it saved money on a per beneficiary basis. i know my time is rung out. i think they can probably be answered yes or no. do you support cmm delivery system reform demonstrations that have the potential to reduce spending without harming the quality of care? the second clause is the most important one. i suspect making certain we deliver money that we deliver care in a cost effective manner but we absolutely must not do things that harms the quality of care being provided to patients. if part of that quality of care, and i d agree with you, would mean bundled and episodic payment models that actually move us toward quality over volume, would you support those efforts? for certain patient populations, bundled payments make a lot of sense. if these experiments are successful, would you allow the expansion of these across the whole system? i think that what we ought to do is allow for all sorts of innovation, not just in this area. there are things i m certain that haven t been thought up yet, that would actually improve quality and delivery of health care in our country. we ought to be incentivizing that kind of innovation. i would simply say, mr. chairman, cmmi is an area i would like to have seen more but it s a model and tool we ought to not discard. thank you. thank you, senator. senator scott. thank you, chairman. dr. price, good see you again. launched the nation s first statewide pay for success project with nurse/family partnership with the use of medicaid funds. 20% of the babies born in south carolina are born to first-time, low income mothers. we also have a much higher than average infant mortality rate. nurse/family partnership is an evidence-based and has already shown real results. both in the health of the mother and the babies. but also in other aspects of the mother s life, such as high school graduation rates for teen moms and unemployment rates. what are your thoughts on incorporating a pay for success model to achieve success metrics? it sounds like a great program that is actually has the right metric. that is the quality of care and the improvement of lives. and as you state, if it s having that kind of success, it probably ought to be put out there again as a best practice for other states to look at and try to model. yes, sir. thank you. i believe you were the director of the orthopedic clinic at grady memorial hospital in atlanta. i was. you mentioned something that i think is very important. i think grady hospital had the highest level of uninsured georgians. you talked about having coverage but really not access. can you elaborate on how your experience at grady may help inform you and direct you as it relates to the uninsured population? it was an incredible privilege to work at grady the number of years i did. we saw patients from all walks of life and many, many uninsured individuals. they come with the same kinds of concerns, the same kinds of challenges that every other individual has. and one of the big they have an additional concern and that is, is somebody going to be caring for me? is somebody going to be ainl able to help me. that s why it was so fulfilling to have the privilege of working at grady and assisting people at a time when they were not only challenged from a health care standpoint, but challenged from the concern of whether or not people would be there to help them. yes, sir. i know you re aware of the title i of every student succeeds act. head start to have access to resources. it seems to me that would be imperative for the secretary of hhs and secretary of education to look ats tos synergiz to help the underprivileged student? can i get your commitment to work with the secretary of education where it makes sense to help serve those students? we have head start under you and other programs under esa. it would be wonderful for us to take the taxpayer in one hand, the child in the other hand and look for ways to make sure that they both win. yeah, i you ve identified an area that is a pet peeve of many of ours. that is, that we don t seem to collaborate across jurisdictional lines. not just in congress, but certainly in the administrative side. look forward to doing just that. having as a meertd tric, how ar kids doing? are they actually getting the kind of service and education that they need? are they improving? are we just being custodians? are we just parking kids in a spot or are we actually assisting in improving their lives and able to demonstrate that? if we re not asking the right questions f we re not looking at the right metrics, we won t get the right answers to expand what s actually working or modify it and move it in a better direction. thank you. i think that s one of the more important parts of your opportunity in this position, is looking at those kids, and you know as well as anyone as a doctor, those ages, before you ever get into pre-k, kindergarten, the development of the child in those first three or four years are powerful opportunities for us to direct one s potential so that they maximize it. sometimes we re missing those opportunities. we think somehow the education system will help that child catch up, but there are things that have to happen before they ever get in the education system. so, i thank you for your willingness to work in that direction. my last question has to deal with the employ-sponsored health care system we re so accustomed to in this country that provides so many with their own insurance. in my home state we have 2.5 million people covered by their employer coverage. if confirmed as hhs secretary, how would you support american employers in their effort to provide effective family health coverage in a consistent and affordable matter? said differently, there s been some conversation about looking for ways to decouple having health insurance through your employer. i think the employer system has been absolutely remarkable success in allowing individuals to gain coverage they might otherwise not gain. i think preserving the employer system is is imperative. that being said, i think there may be ways in which individual employers i ve heard employers say, if you give me the opportunity to provide my employees so they can select the coverage they want, that makes more sense to them. if that works from a voluntary standpoint for employers and for employees, then it may be something to look at. that would be more like the hra approach, where exactly. employer funds an account and the employee chooses the health insurance, not necessarily under the umbrella of the employer specifically? exactly. and gains the same tax benefit. thank you, chairman. thank you. senator mccaskill. at risk of being way, way away from you, and you being someone i ve worked with and respected greatly i want to correct something in your opening statement. the first nominee of president trump that this senate considered was confirmed by a vote of 98-1. i would not consider that a partisan vote. the second nominee of president trump was confirmed by a vote of 88-11. once again, i would not consider that a partisan vote. so, i really do think we are all trying to look at each nominee individually. and i have had a chance to review congressman price s questioning of secretary sabelius. it was no bean bag. it was tough stuff. i think all of this looks different depending on where we re sitting. i wanted to make that point. as to passing obamacare without one democratic vote, we re about to repeal obamacare without one democratic vote. this will be a partisan exercise under reconciliation. it will not be a bipartisan effort. what we have after the repeal is trumpcare. whatever is left after the dust settles is trumpcare. now, i know the president likes to pay close attention to what he puts his name on and i have a feeling, congressman, that even though you keep saying today that congress will decide, you re not really believing, are you, that your new boss is not going to weigh in on what we what he wants congress to pass? we re not going to have a plan from him? we look forward to working with you and other members my question is, will we have a plan from the president? will he have a plan? if i have the privilege to being confirmed, i look forward to working with the president and bringing a plan to you. great. so, the plan will come from president trump, and you will have the most important role in shaping that plan as his secretary of health and human services, correct? i hope i have input, yes, ma am. yes. so whatever trumpcare ends up being, you will have a role in it. i think it s really important to get that on the record. now, when we repeal obamacare, we re going to do a tax cut. does anybody in america who makes less than $200,000, are any of them going to benefit from that tax cut? that s a hypothetical and you all are no, it s not a hypothetical. when we repeal obamacare, there are taxes in obamacare. and when it is repealed,there is no question that taxes are going to be repealed i promise you, the taxes are going to be repealed. when those taxes are repealed, will anyone in america who makes less than $200,000 benefit from the repeal of those taxes? i look forward to working with you on the plan and hopefully that will be the case. no, no, no, no. i m asking, the taxes in there now, does anybody who makes less than $200,000 now, pay those taxes now? it depends on how you define the taxes. many individuals are paying more than they did prior to no, i m talking about taxes. the cadillac tax has not been implemented, so that doesn t affect anybody. i m trying to get at the very simple question, that i don t think you want to answer. in fact, when obamacare is repealed, no one in america who makes less than $200,000 is going to enjoy the benefit of that. as i say, if confirmed, i look forward to working with you on that. that s not an answer. in my office, ending medicare, your plan and you have worked on for year, and converting medicare to private insurance markets with government subsidies, correct? not correct. well, we talked yesterday, and we kind of went through this in my office. by the end of our conversation, you admitted to me, and i m going to quote you, that your plan for medicare in terms of people getting either tax credits or subsidies or whatever however you re going to pay for the medicare recipients would be them having choices on a private market. you said, yes, it was pretty similar to obamacare, with the exception of the mandate. didn t you say that to me yesterday? that s a fairly significant exception. well, but these people are old. they don t need to be mandated to get insurance. it s not like a 27-year-old who doesn t think he s going to get sick. you don t need a mandate for people who are elderly. they have to have health insurance. so, the mandate is not as relevant, but didn t you admit to me that obamacare and private markets is very similar to what you were envisioning? didn t you use the phrase, similar? it is pretty similar. what i did say is the mandate is significant. the mandate is significant, i get, in obamacare. but we don t need a mandate for seniors, would you agree with that? you don t need to tell seniors they need health insurance? i hope we don t need a mandate for anybody so they can purchase the kind of coverage they want and not the kind the government forces them to buy. finally, you want to block grant medicaid for state flexibility and efficiency, correct? i believe that medicaid is a system that is now not responding necessarily to the needs of the recipients. consequently, it s incumbent upon all of us as policymakers to look for a better way to solve that challenge. are you in favor of block granting medicaid? i m in favor of a system more responsive. are you in favor of block granting medicaid? it s a simple question, congressman. for the most powerful job in health care in the country. i don t know why you re unwilling to answer block granting medicaid. it s not that complicated. i m in favor of making certain medicaid is a system that responds to patients, not the government. i don t understand why you won t answer that. and i don t have time. i know i m over. i will probably i don t know if we re going to get another round, mr. chairman. should i ask my last question or are we going to get another chance? i m going to allow additional questions. i hope that not everybody will take the opportunity. i will digssappoint you, i m sorry. let me just on that point say that obamacare raised taxes on millions of americans families across income levels. nonpartisan joint committee on taxation in may of 2010 analyses identified significant widespread tax increases on taxpayers earning under $200,000 contained in the aca. and, for example, for 2017, 13.8 million taxpayers with incomes below $200,000 will be hit with more than $3.7 billion, with a b, in obamacare tax from an increase in the income floor for the medical expense deductions. obamacare has led to middle class tax hikes. without question, it s led to fewer insurance options, higher deductibles and higher premiums. so, i think those are facts that can t be denied. i ll look forward to looking at those facts because somewhere in this mix we have alternative facts. well, just i think these are right, i can tell you that. well, i think mine are right. mr. chairman, point of privilege to respond? yes, sir. on this point, no alternative facts. the republicans in last year s reconciliation bill cut taxes for one group of people. they cut taxes for the most fortunate in the country. that s a matter of public record. it s not an alternative factor or universe. people making $200,000 and up got their taxes cut. that was in the reconciliation bill of the republicans last year. well, let s see who s next here. i don t agree with that, but we ll see who s next. senator grassley oh, cassidy. i didn t see you. senator cassidy and then senator grassley. thank you, mr. chairman. dr. price, how are you? i m well, senator. let s talk a little about medicaid because we re getting this rosy scenario of obamacare and of the republican attempt to replace it. it does seem a little odd. first, i want to note for the record that president trump has said in various ways that he doesn t want people to lose coverage. he would like to cover as many people as under obamacare. wishes to take care of those with pre-existing conditions and to do it without mandates and lower costs. those will be your marching orders, fair statement? absolutely. now, let s go to you and i, we talked at a previous meeting. we both worked in public hospitals for the uninsured. and for the poorly insured, folks like medicaid. now, let s just talk about medicaid. why would we see patients on medicaid at a hospital for the uninsured? if they wanted to see an orthopedic orthopedist in private practice, does medicaid pay a provider well enough to pay costs of seeing an orthopedic patient? oftentimes it does not. as you well know, as i mentioned before, one out of three physicians who ought to be able to see medicaid patients in this nation, do not take any medicaid patients. there s a reason for that. whether it s reimbursement or whether it s hassle factor or regulations or the like. but that s a system that isn t working for those patients. and we auought to be honest abo that, look at that and answer the question why and then address that. now, i ll note that when the house version of the aca passed, robert pear in the new york times wrote an article about a michigan physician, an oncologist, who had so many medicaid patients from michigan medicaid that she was going bankrupt. she had to discharge patients from her practice. now, the ranking members said we can t have alternative facts. agree with that. we also know new england journal of medicine article speak being medicaid expansion in oregon about how when they expanded medicaid in oregon, outcomes did not improve. so, i suppose that kind of informs you as you say we need to make medicaid better for patients. absolutely. we need to look at the right metrics. just gaining coverage for individuals is an admirable goal. but it is it ought not be the only goal. providing for people on the ground, for real people and real lives. whether or not we re affecting them in a positive way or negative way. if we re affecting them in a negative way, again, we need to be honest with ourselves and say, how can we improve that? now, a lot of times there s this kind of conflation of per beneficiary payments to states per medicaid enrollee and block grants, which to me is a conflation. i ll note that bill clinton on the left and phil graham and rick santorum on right proposed per beneficiary payments some time ago. it s actually how would you agree with this, how the federal employee self-benefit program pays for these federal employ s employees, they pay per beneficiary payment to an insurer, fair statement? correct. wouldn t it be great if medicare worked as as well as federal employee health insurance in terms of outcome? when you talk about the medicaid population, it s not a monolithic population. there are four different demographic groups within it seniors and disabled and then healthy moms and kids, by and large. we treat each one of those folks exactly the same from the medicaid rules. so, when you re pressed on whether, by golly, you believe in block grants, i don t hear any nuance in that queshgs are you speak being a per beneficiary payment? are you speak being each of those four, one of those four? how do you dice that? new york is an older state demographically. utah is a young statement. fair statement? absolutely. those are the things i think we tend not to look at, because they re more difficult to measure. they re more difficult to look at. but when we re talking about people s lives, when we re talking about people s health care, it s imperative we do the extra work that needs to be done to determine whether or not, yes, indeed, the public policy we re putting forward will help you, not harm you. let me ask because there s also some criticism about health savings accounts. i love them because they activate the patient. i think we re familiar with the healthy indiana plan where on a waiver they gave folks of lower income health savings accounts and had better outcomes, decreased e usage. any comment on that? just when people do engage in their health care, they tend to demand more, they tend to demand better services. and individuals that have greater opportunity for choices of who they see, where they re treated, when they re treated and the like, have greater opportunity to gain better health care. going back to not one to have alternative facts f we contrast the experience in healthy indiana with the experience in oregon where national economic bureau of research published in new england journal of medicine found no different outcome from those fulfilled in medicaid expansion program in oregon, contrast with good outcomes, in that which in indiana engaged patient to become activated in their own care, er usage fell but outcomes improved. i think in our world of standard facts, i kind of like your position. thanks for bringing a nuanced, informed view to the health care reform debate, dr. price. thanks, senator. senator grassley. two statements before i ask a couple questions. one is, it s kind of a welcome relief to have somebody of your profession in this very important role, particularly knowing the importance of the doctor/patient relationship, because in my dealing with cms and hhs over a long period of time, i think that the bureaucracy has been short of a lot of that hands-on information that people ought to have. and secondly, when you were in my office, we discussed the necessity of your responding to congressional inquiries. and you very definitely said you would. i tongue in cheek said maybe you ought to say maybe because a lot of times they don t do it, but since you said you would, i will hold you to that and appreciate anything you can do to help us do our oversight. as a result of oversight, i got a legislation passed a few years ago called a physician s payment sunshine act. and the only reason i bring this up is because it took senator wyden and me last december working hard to stop the house of representatives from gutting that legislation in the cures act that passed. i want to make very clear that the legislation i m talking about doesn t prohibit anything. it only has reporting requirements because it makes it very, very well, it brings about the principle of transparency, brings accountability. and i ve got some studies here that we did, and some newspaper reports on them, particularly one about a psychiatrist at emory university that was not reporting everything that they should report and even the president of the emory university came to my office and said, thank you for making us aware of this stuff. i want to put those in the record. since you re administering this legislation and since senator blumenthal and i will think about expanding this legislation to include nurse paractitioner assistant and even under the obamacare administration, after we got it passed, it was three years getting regulations, to get it carried out. so, effectively, it s only been working for 2, maybe 2 1/2 years. so i would like to if you re confirmed, would you and the department of human health and human services work with me to ensure that this transparency initiative is not weakened? we look forward to working with you, sir. i think transparency in this area and so many others is vital. again, not just not just in outcomes or in pricing but so many areas so patients are able to understand what s going on in the health care system. thank you. last one deals with vaccine safety. you re a physician. i believe you would agree that immunization is very important for modern medicine and that we ve been able get rid of smallpox way back in 77, worldwide polio, i think, in 1991. at least in the western hems and all that. so, as a physician, would you recommend that families follow the recommended vaccine schedule that has been established by experts and is constantly reviewed? i think that science and health care has identified a very important aspect of public health, and that s the role of vaccinations. thank you very much. i yield back my time. thank you, senator. senator stabenau. thank you. a series of stories from public forehe forum that was held by my colleagues, that that be included in the record. without objection. thank you very much. welcome, congressman price, and senator. and appreciate our private discussion as well as the discussion this morning. let s start out with lots of questions and see if we can move through some things quickly. you said this morning that you would not abandon people with pre-existing conditions is that basically what you re talking about is high-risk pools, is that one of the strategies that you re thinking about? i ve heard that talked about this morning. i think high-risk pools can be incredibly helpful in making certain individuals that have pre-existing illness are able to be cared for in the highest manner possible. i think there are other methods as well. we ve talked about other pooling mechanisms, the destruction of the small group market has made it such that folks can t find coverage affordable for them. one way to solve that challenge is to allow individuals in the small group market to pool together. i think we talked about this in your office. with the old blue heel model being the template for individuals who aren t economically aligned are able to pool together their resources solely for the purpose of purchasing coverage. for about 35 years we have tried high-risk pools. 35 states had them before the affordable care act. frankly, it didn t produce great results. in 20110.2% of people with pre-existing conditions, 0.2%, were actually in a high-risk pool. and the premiums were 150 to 200% higher than standard rates for healthy individuals. and they had lifetime and annual limits on coverage and cost states money. so, that was the reality before we passed the affordable care act. so, let me also ask you, when president trump said last weekend that insurance was going to be much better, do you think that insurance without protections for those pre-existing conditions or without maternity coverage or without mental health coverage or insurance that would reinstate caps on cancer treatments is better? well, i don t know that that s what he was referring to. he said it would be better. if we, in fact, took away if we went to high-risk tools instead of covering people with pre-existing conditions or if we stopped the other coverage we have now, i m just wondering if you define that as better. you d have to give me a specific well, let me what may be better for you may not be better for me or anyone else. that s the important thing i m trying to get across. is patients need to be at the center of this, not government. should government be deciding these things or should patients be deciding these things? prior to the affordable care act, about 70% of the private plans that a woman could purchase in the marketplace did not cover basic maternity care. do you think that that s better, not to cover basic maternity care? i presume that she wouldn t purchase that coverage if she needed it then. she would have to pay more, just as in general for many women, just being a woman with a pre-existing condition. that is the reason why we have a basic set of services covered under health care. it s just a different way of looking at this. this is something where, sure, if a woman wanted to pay a premium, wanted to pay more, she could find maternity care. we said in the affordable care act, that s pretty basic. for over half the population who are women, maternity care ought to be covered. let me go to another one. do you believe mental health services should be a guaranteed benefit in all health insurance plans? i ve been a supporter of mental health inclusion, yes. so, mental health should be a defined benefit under health insurance plans? i think mental health illnesses ought to be treated on the same model as other physical ill pss. %-p lot of discussion, and i have to say also with the nominee for office management and budget also talking today about medicare and social security, i personally believe people on medicare should be very worried right now in terms of what overall we re hearing. but i did want my time is up. i did want just to indicate a message from my mom who s 98 years old who said she doesn t want more choices. she just wants to be able to see her doctor and get the medical care that she needs. is not at all supportive of the idea of medicare in some way being changed into premium support into a voucher. so, i m conveying to you somebody who s getting great care right now and she s not interested in more choices. she just wants to keep her care. thank you. chairman, i would just convey to medicare population in this nation that they don t have reason to be concerned. we look forward to assisting them and gaining the care and coverage they need. thank you. senator cantwell. thank you, mr. chairman. congressman price, sorry we haven t had a chance to talk. i apologize. no, i think both have tried and it s been a myriad of consequences. weather. i wanted to ask you broadly, i know a lot of my colleagues have been asking you about medicaid, but what do you think is the rise in medicaid cost? what is it due to? i think it s multifactorial. we have a system that has many, many controls that are providing greater costs to the provision of the care, that is that s being provided. i think that oftentimes we re not identifying the best practices in the medicaid system, so that patients move through the system in a way that s much more economical and much more efficient and effective. not just from a cost standpoint, but from a patient standpoint. there are so many things that could be done for especially the sickest of the sick in the medicaid population, where we could put greater resources and greater individual attention to individual patients. as you know, in a bell curve of patients in any population, there are those that are the outliers on the high side, where they where the resources spent to be able to provide their care is significant. and if you focus on those individuals, then you oftentimes specifically, then you oftentimes can provide a higher level of care and a higher level of quality of care for those folks and a more responsive care for those folks at a lower cost and move them down into the mainstream of the bell curve. okay. well, you brought up a couple of interesting points. and i want to follow up on that. specifically, if i started that conversation, i would start with two big fa nphenomenons. if you re living 10 or 15 years longer than in the past, they re going to consume more health care. second, the baby boomer population reaching retirement age. those two things are ballooning the cost of health care in general, and, specifically, for the medicaid population. and i want to make sure i understand where you are, because i feel like the administration is creating a war on medicaid. you re saying that you want to cap and control the cost. and what we ve already established in the affordable care act are those things that are best practice incentives and ways to give the medicaid population leverage in getting affordable health care. i want to understand if you are for these things. for example, we provided resources in the affordable care act for to rebalance off of for medicaid patients off of nursing home carrion to community-based care. why? because it s more affordable. do you support that rebalancing effort? i would respectfully, senator, take issue with your description of war on medicaid. we want to make sure medicaid population is able to receive the highest possible care. i ve cared for thousands of medicaid patients. the last thing we want is to decrease the quality of care they have access to. clearly, the system isn t working right now. moving towards home-based care is something that is that is if it s right for the patient, it s a wonderful thing to be able to do. we ought to incentivize that. there are so many things we could do in medicaid that what provide greater quality of care that we don t incentivize right now. we did incentivize it in the affordable care act in your state and about other 20 states actually did it. they took the money from the affordable care act, in fact, georgia received $57 million in transition to make sure medicaid beneficiaries got care in community-based care. it s been able to shift 10% of their long-term costs, basically, to that community-based care. so, huge savings. it s working. so, are you for repealing that part of the affordable care act? what i m for is making certain, again, the medicaid population has access to the highest care possible. we ll do everything to improve that. so many in the medicaid population don t have access to the highest quality care. i would hope you would look at this model, and also look at the basic health plan model which is, again, what i think you re proposing and what the administration is refusing to refute, when the president said, i m going to protect these things and my colleague, senator sanders brought this up and said, are you going to protect this and the white house chief of staff is now saying, no, no, we re basically going to cap medicaid spending. it s a problem. what we want to do is we want to give them leverage in the marketplace. that s what the basic health plan does. that s what the community-based care plan does. it gives them the ability to get more affordable care at better outcomes and is saving us money. so, if you could give us a response. i see my time is expired. look at those two programs and tell me whether you support those delivery system reforms in the affordable care act. be happy to. thank you. thank you, senator. that would end our first round. i d like to not go through a full second round. but we ve got some additional senators here who would like to ask some more, so i guess we ll start with senator wyden. thank you, mr. chairman. congressman, i have several ideas on we re going to break away from the hearing momentarily to assess what we ve just heard. an important hearing before the senate finance committee. the confirmation process for dr. tom price. the congressman who has been nominated to become the next secretary of health and human services. it s already three hours, jake, they ve been hearing the testimony. the confirmation process going forward. a lot of democrats are deeply concerned about this nomination. they are. and they ve been really trying to press for specifics in terms of what exactly will be the bill, the legislation that replaces obamacare after republicans repeal it. even just basic opinions. kellyanne conway, president trump s top adviser, has said publicly that they are going to take medicaid and make it a block grant program, meaning the money instead of going from the federal government to individuals will go to states. states will decide how to mete out that money. and congressman price wouldn t even offer an opinion. senator claire mccaskill, democrat of missouri, was just asking, are you in favor of block granting medicaid, and he