trump's health care surrender. >> i'm disappointed because we could have had it. so i'm disappointed. >> i will not sugar coat this. this is a disappointing day for us. >> the party's full promise for four straight campaigns broken. how did it happen and why are they giving up so easily? white house budget director mick mulvaney joins me this morning. plus can a deeply divided republican party ever figure out how to govern? i'll talk to two republican no votes from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum together. senator mike leigh of utah and charlie dan of pennsylvania. >> and if health care wasn't bad enough for the president trump the fbi director confirms his

agency has been investigating the president's campaign and its potential ties to russia for months. >> and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and russia's efforts. i'll talk to the leading democrat on the senate intel committee, mike warner of virginia. >> and this piece of advice for president trump. don't fight everybody. pick your battles. >> i sit down with jerry brown of california. joining me for insight and analysis are, tom brokaw of nbc news, joy reid, host of a.m. joy, hugh hewitt and ileana johnson of politico. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." from nbc news in washington, the longest-running show in television history celebrating its 70th year, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning by any standard, that was the most consequential week in donald trump's young presidency in the span of just five days, mr.

trump's credentiality with voters and his clout for congress were dealt big blows. mr. comey is investigating possible links between the trump campaign and the russian government. by friday, house republicans had to pull the bill to repeal and replace obamacare, an embarrassing acknowledge that they didn't have the votes despite full control of the senate and the white house. in a short time in office, the president's travel ban has been blocked twice, the russian investigation is widening and his political capital is shrinking. in behind the scenes negotiating and arm twisting on health care, the president was lackluster in the art of the deal that didn't close.

>> for seven years it's been the promise that united republicans repeated over and over again on the campaign trail by donald trump. >> the first thing we're going to do is repeal and replace obamacare. >> immediately repealing and replacing obamacare. >> immediately, repealing and replacing the disaster known as obamacare. >> but on friday, house republicans, facing a revolt by more than 30 conservatives and modz rats pulled their bill to repeal and replace obamacare from the floor, leaving president obama's chief domestic achievement intact. >> we'll be living with obamacare for the foreseeable future. all week republicans promise that president trump's personal political capital would bring the bill across the finish line. >> the reason i feel so good about this is because the president has become a great closer. >> he's the closer. >> he is the closer. >> a tremendous closer. >> now the defeat of mr. trump's first legislative effort raises questions about the negotiating

skills that he promised would break through gridlock in washington. >> if you can't make a good deal with a politician then there's something wrong with you. you're certainly not very good. >> and it damages the reputation of house speaker paul ryan. the self-described policy wonk that republicans drafted to push through conservative legislation, and it raises questions about the party's overall ability to govern. >> we were a ten-year opposition party where being against things was easy to do. >> quite frankly, we have a group of people that are no on everything. >> it is an early victory for grassroots activism on the left. after angry town halls put pressure moderate lawmakers to vote no. now obamacare's survival or collapse lies with mr. trump, a president who vowed to dismantle it. on friday he told "the new york times," quote, he was pleased to have it all behind him. it's enough already. though the president tried to pin some blame on democrats.

>> the losers are nancy pelosi and chuck schumer because now they own obamacare. >> mr. trump also implied he might eventually have to work with democrats to fix the law. it is unlikely to happen any time soon, eager to talk about anything else, the president spent his weekly address talking not about health care, not about tax reform, not about infrastructure, but about exploring space. >> this week in the company of astronauts i was honored to sign the nasa transition authorization act right into law. >> the blame game is in full swing. the president tweeted this just a few minutes ago. democrats are smiling in d.c., and the freedom caucus with the help of club for growth and heritage have saved planned parenthood and o-care while some republicans are blaming the white house and others are pointing at speaker ryan and still others like the president is pinning the fault on the freedom caucus. joining me now is a former

member of the freedom caulk us and someone tasked with helping to the president to close the deal. mr. mulvaney. the president himself will pin this on the club for growth, and the conservative caucus, and a caucus you were a member of just six months ago. >> there's plenty of blame to go around as we try to figure out what happened. what happened is washington won. i think the one thing we learned this week is washington was moreec broen than president trump thought that it was. what you have is the status quo wins and unfortunately, the folks back home lost. you can plablame it on the free caucus if you want to and charlie dent, and it was the powers that be in washington that won. >> the republican party has not changed washington after taking over the house, and taking over the senate in '14 and over the white house now. >> we haven't been able to

change washington if the first 65 days and if there's anything that's disappointing and an educational process to the trump administration is this place was a lot more rotten than he thought it was. and i was here. i helped found it. >> why couldn't you get them to yes? your former colleagues and you were a vocal member of this caucus. >> yeah. >> why couldn't you get them to yes? >> i have no yet. i really don't. let's step back and realize that probably half of the folks in the group were yes and half were no, but what i told the president what would happen is we'd go up to the last couple of days and the last couple of hours and they would make it better and for some reason that hasn't happened and i didn't realize this difficulty ran as deep as it was. >> you would have been a yes on this? >> without reservation and told the men and women in the freedom caucus that many, many times. again, many of them would have supported the bill if it had come to the floor. it was a bizarre combination of who was against this bill and

some folks on the freedom caucus. >> doesn't that tell you if the bill was flawed? if you can't win over conservatives and moderates who can you win? >> folks are paying attention to the wrong things. they're still paying attention to the special interests and being re-elected. what happened here is we got stuck with obamacare and the people have been telling people how bad this program is and how harming it is to folks back home are the ones who prevented it from being replaced. that's what's so frustrating. >> the president is glad it's behind him. white house press secretary sean spicer said the president left everything on the field. i want to put up a bill -- a chart here. this is how long it takes to get big legislative items done. obamacare from start to finish was 187 legislative days and medicare part d, 166. welfare reform was 56. and from start to finish on health care was 17 days.

17 days and you guys are waving the white flag? >> it was 17 days in this administration. we've been working against it the -- >> what was the hurry? why didn't you have a bill that could pass in the seven years or why didn't you acknowledge that you needed more time? >> here is the hurry. there is a lot to be done. we needed to get rid of obamacare. we needed to fix the system so we could help folks back home and then move on to tax reform so we could help get the people back to work. the president wants to do a lot of things and is not willing to do wharand the one thing i told, look, this president is not like any other president that you've ever seen before. he will not do things the same way. >> he didn't sell it. he didn't give a major speech on it and he would do rallies and say health care, i can't wait to do tax reform. it was like a nuisance to him. >> chuck, no. you're just wrong on that one. the man worked and you said it

yourself. we left everything on the field. >> how do you describe that as leaving everything on the field. president obama didn't give up in the face of tough town halls. he spent another six months and he had a special election and they kept going, and i guess the question, and you saw i think it's phil klein in the washington examiner that said this is the biggest broken promise that anyone's made in american political history. >> we had 120 members of congress through the white house in the last couple of days. i myself, at one time on wednesday afternoon, we had 80 members of congress on the property at one time. mike pence was meeting with the group, and the president was meeting with another group, no stone left unturned. >> you're giving up after 17 legislative days and you're live giving up after 66 days. he wants to move on. clearly, you're not going to touch health care for what? the next 12 months. >> winter breaks? >> the winter break? >> no, when it breaks. that's what folks are starting

to talk about and frustrating as we tried to help folks back home is the end result is that people back home will be hurt. >> the democrats will be blamed for it because it's not trumpcare in this country, it is not ryancare. >> and you have no responsible that the law of the land, that paul ryan said would be the law of the land for the foreseeable future, does your administration have the duty to make it work? >> we had the duty to try to fix it. >> do you have the duty to make it work? >> we have the duty to help people back home. you cannot fix a broken system. this is a system built on the idea that the government could force you to do something you didn't want and that that would make you happy. you are never going to fix that. the system must be removed and it must be repealed and replaced and you're not going to fix a system that doesn't trust people to do what's in their best interest. >> i keep coming back, why is it that a republican house and senate could put a repeal bill on president obama's desk so

easily and you couldn't put a repeal bill on president trump's desk? >> we're asking the same questions. we really are. i know the man in the white house is capable of governing. without a doubt, no question. if anybody had any doubts about president trump's ability to be the president they should have been -- >> really? can't close a deal? he said he was a big negotiator. >> this is what everybody said he couldn't do and he couldn't work with different groups in the republican party. no, this was the president being the president. what you saw this week were more rotten thing than we did. >> the president did a saturday morning tweet and he said this, to go watch judge janeane on fox news on fox news at:00 p.m. so we did. here's what she said. >> paul ryan needs to step down as speaker of the house. this is not no one expected a

businessman to understand the complicated ins and outs. >> what message was the president trying to send, telling his supporters to watch her and her lead editorial was to say house speaker paul ryan needs to step down. is that what the president wanted people to hear? >> i have spent more time in the last week with the president of the united states than i thought i would, than four years. i've never seen him blame paul ryan. >> why did he want people to watch her show? >> the people to blame were the people who would not vote yes and they would vote no and when sen to lee is here. the folks who voted no are the folks to blame. he is want blaming paul ryan at all? there is no subtle campaign to undermine paul ryan? >> i've been in the oval office with the president and with the speaker more in the last couple of days than i ever thought. i've never seen the president for a second try to blame paul ryan for this. >> all right. are you going to repeal and

replace obamacare before the end of this year? >> my guess is we will move on. >> you are not touching health care. >> when it fails, and it may be may, and it may be the end of this year, folks will come back and say --? this is no longer a hundred-day priority. >> the president has things he wants to accomplish and he's not going to wait for congress to sit around and do the right thing. when it breaks and chuck, it's going to break, they will come back to us and ask us to take it up again. >> i will leave it there. as tax reform gets under way i'll see you there again soon. mick mulvaney, thanks for coming on. appreciate it. it was tanked by a revolt in the house, but it was facing steep opposition in the senate, senator of utah and charlie, and one thing they both agreed on, they weren't going to vote for this bill as it was written and they both join me now together.

gentlemen, welcome. senator leigh, let me start with you, the president is blaming the freedom caucus, club for growth and heritage for, quote, protecting planned parenthood and obamacare. is that a fair read of what happened this week, sir? >> that is not at all how i see it. this bill didn't pass because it didn't deal with the most fundamental flaw in obamacare. the part of obamacare that has made health care unacceptable and unaffordable. until we get a bill that actually brings down the cost of health care for hardworking americans we're not going to get something that passes. >> congressman dent, do you pin the blame? some people pin the blame on the moderates, it wasn't just the freedom caucus and the moderates helped tank this, too. what say you? >> well, i tend to agree with the president on that point. let's be very honest about this. a lot of the concessions the white house was making at the end of this process were to try

to please and placate the hard right on essential benefits and other issues all to placate people who were not going to vote for the bill anyway. by doing that, they ended up alienating more people on the senate right or moderates. that is really what happened. the bottom line, chuck, that in order to reform health care in this country we'll have to do it in a durable, sustainable way and bipartisan manner. we as republicans should not make the same mistakes that the democrats did in 2010 by muscling that law through. i voted against it. they muscled it through. we need to do this in a durable, bipartisan and sustainable way. >> before i go back to senator lee. i want you to respond to was out this morning and it's an anecdote about the president and you. according to an attendee, the president angrily informed you, congressman dent, that you were destroying the republican party and was going to take down tax reform and i'm going to blame

you. is that -- is that what the president said to you and how did you respond? >> i listened to respectfully to what the president had to say, this discussion has been far too much about artificial timeliness and arbitrary deadlines all to affect tax reform. this conversation should be more about the people whose lives will be impacted by decisions on health care. we did not have much of a substantive discussion. i'm holding up a plan from republican governors from expansion states like mine, kasich, snyder, sandoval, hutchison. they wanted to be part of this process and they were not brought in. those kinds of issues were very important to me and to the people i represent and frankly, to a lot of the members of congress who are part of the senate right group who are very concerned about the medicaid changes and yeah, i can hold my ground. >> senator lee, you heard mick mulvaney said they're moving on. you heard the president say he's

glad health care is behind him. first of all, what say you? is health care behind you? >> absolutely not. we need to do that. we need to do that very thing. we need to get back to the table and get people negotiating. as a whole lot of people said the other day, as paul ryan himself said when this bill was going down the tubes. he said we came so close and he's right. they were not far away from a deal. they could have gotten to a deal. there were a few things that could have added to the bill to vote for it so that it would have passed. this is part of the legislative process and the process has to be allowed to play itself out and devoting 17 legislative days to a bill and then walking away from it because it hasn't passed within 17 legislative days makes no sense especially when this is something that we've been campaigning on for seven years and the american people are hurting. hardworking middle class americans across this country

are unable to afford health care because of this bill. we've got to fix that or we've got to repeal it. >> now that we have the two of you that represent the ideological polls of the republican party. i want to ask you both whether you agree with the following quote from a colleague of yours, senator lee. it's bill cassidy, republican of louisiana. he has his own health care bill. he said this that now, quote, there's widespread recognition that the federal government, congress has create the right for every american to have health care. essentially, senator lee, he is saying the debate's over about whether government should be involved with this or not and now it's time to design a law that acknowledges this right, that people have a right to health care and the government's got to figure out how to do it for them. do you concur with that? >> in so far as he's talking about a federal right, rights are things that the government can't do to you. rights are not something that the government must do to you or provide for you.

he's suggesting the federal government is key and the increased federal presence is somehow going to bring down the cost of health care. that's simply not true, and in fact, that's refuted abundantly by the last seven years by what happened since obamacare was passed. when this bill was passed and we brought the federal government into it with the promise that it would make health care more affordable. >> congressman dent, i would guess you are in more agreement with senator cassidy. >> i spoke with senator cassidy and senator collins at length and senator cassidy from a very c conservative state. we have a health architecture now, flawed as it is, i voted against it the and we need to make it market oriented and patient-friendly and patient-centered. that debate hassal read ed been settled. our job is now to fix it and make it much better than it is today because it's simply not working for too many americans.

>> senator lee, congressman dent i'll leave it there and i have a feeling that there say divide here on the role of government that hasn't been bridged inside the republican party and until that's done we still may have this debate to go on and on and on. gentlemen, i appreciate you coming on together. it's good to have you both. >> when we come back, how deep is the damage to president trump from the collapse of this health care bill, plus the federal investigation into the president and his team that might not end and his team that might not end for weeks or months or y♪ ♪ ♪ what we do every night is like something out of a strange dream.

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welcome back. panelists here, tom brokaw, grand puba of nbc news, joy reid, and always a joy and hugh hewitt host on the salem radio network. al right, hugh, i'm going to start with you because this is what "the washington examiner" headline is, gop cave on obamacare repeal is the biggest broken promise in political history, and it was at the top of, i believe, phil klein's analysis. is he right? >> no. we had a great week with neil gorsuch and he'll weigh the balance of the supreme court and president trump had as a huge win to put on the table. it was a big loss, and i agree with the autopsy that director mulvaney put out, it isn't on paul ryan and it is on area 51 of the freedom caucus that believes in legislative flying saucers that ignore the senate and senate rules and

reconciliation rules and they own the loss. nobody else. >> tom? >> the fact of the matter is the entire republican side of the house for seven years has been screaming about repealing obamacare. so they come up with a plan that they do in the middle of the night and they shove it in front of the house and they say take it or leave it. the president buys into that with a creative circular firing squad and the command was ready, fire, aim and we're all involved in politics, but out in america today people with serious or even moderate health problems are wondering, where do i go from here? it is soec broen in washington. it's not going to get anything done. >> we did some voter interviews over the last couple of days. there was one that really stood out to me, and i'll play it here from a woman in wichita. trump voter. listen to this. >> you cannot slam something so incredibly layered and complex together in that many days. i don't care how many people are working on it. you cannot do it. it took them so much longer to craft aca and it still isn't

correct. there has to be a balance. >> she gets it. >> one thing i don't think has been sufficiently appreciate side that the democrats expended an enormous amount of political capital to pass obamacare. it took 13 months to craft the law. president obama talked about it incessantly and mocked by republicans for pounding away at it. democrats lost 63 seats in congress and six seats in the senate. i don't know if republicans were mentally prepared if they cared about it so much to expend that kind of political capital and to know, okay, precisely because they're doing something unprecedented and taking away an entitlement. we might lose the house and the senate for doing this. do they care that much? i'm not sure. >> it was a regulatory process, and i thought the graphic you put up the number of llegislatie days devoted to previous legislate, where your time is spent that's where your passion is. the problem for republicans the

17-day oddisy and a lot of people on the democratic side perceived and repeal and replace is about taking away obama signature achievement and affirmatively, what did they want to do? republicans have spent the last 30, 40 years of trying to replace this image of callousness toward the poor and callousness toward the elderly with the idea of compassionate conservatism. that was whisked away and there was a cruelty to this bill that was even apparent to conservative voters and republican voters who were shocked at the cruelty and the third thing and the president has hinted at this, too, this was a tax cut. this was an attempt to jam through a giant tax cut for the health toe set the stage for tax reform. >> charlie dent said that, hugh. he basically said this was all about trying to finance a $2 trillion tax cut hoping that they could make it deficit neutral. >> charlie, who is a friend of mine, lives in a marginal district. he has to be careful with every vote. half of the freedom caucus who

killed this live in a safe, red district. obamacare is the time share that the democrats bought that they cannot admit the cost of, that they keep telling themselves was a good idea. it is in a death spiral. joy and i have had many disagreements about that. >> it's not the definition of an economic death spiral? >> it's not the definition. >> we'll point out the president of aetna and you will lose coverage and that's a death spiral. joy disagrees and i know she wants to jump in here. >> i appreciate her reticence. >> we know aetna lied and we've had a federal uj j say aetna lied and they pulled out for other reasons and insurance companies raised premiums and it's what they do, and the congressional budget office made it quite clear the affordable care act is not, not collapsing and not in a death spiral. it's not. >> i want to quickly get to paul ryan here because it is -- is there a subtle palace intrigue

campaign going on with some people in this white house to undermine paul ryan? >> i don't know about that, but i was stunned who paul ryan who had been in this town in a long time say at the end of the process, well, there is a difference being an opposition party and a majority party and it's their fourth term in progress and he also said it's really complicated, health care. to come to the american people in 60 days in this admin stralgz and say it was complicated and by the way, we didn't realize the difference between being an opposition party and being a majority party. i think that takes a lot of his credibility away from him, quite honestly. >> can we comment on mick mulvaney essentially saying the tea party which is what the freedom caucus is, they're the establishment? that's odd. >> when you play the blame game here you talk about paul ryan and it's important to note. how does he roll out a bill that not one conservative health care

policy expert supports? this was a bill without a core constituency of supporters behind it which i think was its essential problem. i know he wants to blame the tea partiers, but how do you explain that. >> no, not the tea partiers, the area 51 i will never vote for anything that isn't perfect people. it doesn't exist. >> i think that's hard to reconcile. >> i'll close the loop here with just one comment which came from a strategist quoted in "the wall street journal," ryan is probably safest as speaker because nobody particularly wants to be henry the viii's exwife. exwife. >> can they survive various: (shouting) heigh! ho! ( ♪ ) it's off to work we go! woman: on the gulf coast, new exxonmobil projects are expected to create over 45,000 jobs. and each job created by the energy industry supports two others in the community.

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upper respiratory tract infection, and headache. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. ask your dermatologist about otezla today. otezla. show more of you. welcome back. last monday the house intelligence committee held its first open hearing on russia since president trump's inaug raising. the result, the bombshell confirmation that the fbi is indeed investigating the trump campaign's potential ties to russia. and a chaotic back and forth between the committee's top two members after the chairman briefed the president whose campaign his committee is supposed to be investigating and all of this calling into question over whether the house can conduct a credible investigation, and it appears now that investigation could be falling apart before our eyes. so this week the senate intelligence committee will get its turn to prove that someone in congress can credibly investigate this in a bipartisan

way. >> senator mark warner of virginia is in the committee. welcome. >> good morning. >> look, i want to get right to getting your reaction to what fbi director james comey said when he testified that they are indeed investigating ties between the trump campaign and russia. >> well, chuck, i want to talk about russia, as well, but we just saw the first half of this show talk about the failure of trumpcare take place. the reason was nobody talked about the details of the bill. it would have cost 24 million americans their healthcare, it would have raised prices for seniors, it was a major tax cut for the wealthy and an $800 billion cost shift for the states to pick up the medicaid and it was an awful bill and i think people across the country revolted against it. sometimes the substance actually matters. in terms of russia, this is -- i've said before, this is the most important thing i've ever done in my public life, and what i know now as i get more and more into this, i will double

down on that statement because it's extraordinary. we have the fbi director admitting there are investigations going on. we know the russians massively interfered with our elections and we had 1,000-page internet trolls that flooded the zone with fake news, and we have a series of people that are closely affiliated with the president who have had extensive ties with russia including the fact, 60 days into the administration. we have both the nsa director and the national security adviser that had to resign and the attorney general had to recuse himself because of those ties. >> how much does an active investigation in the fbi hamper the senate intelligence committee's ability to do an investigation? isn't it plausible it can't turn over these materials because they are done? >> there were prior examples. think back to watergate. there was a doj going on. >> you'll do both? >> i talked regularly with director comey.

there will be times when we'll have, i'm sure, brush-ups and we start our process in terms of open hearing this week and we have terms of reference and we have incredible access to information at the cia and we'll have to get more information and we've started interviewing witnesses and we've got a long way to go to get this done and we'll get it done in a bipartisan way. >> you had the house intelligence chairman devin nunes claim that he has now seen some raw intelligence reports that perhaps confirmed that there was at least some inadvertent surveillance of folks connected to the trump campaign. have you seen any of this material? what is he referring to? i am totally mystified. i've talked to democrats on the committee. i think it's fairly mystifying if not outrageous that he makes these claims and then goes to sit down and briefs the white house and i know adam schiff, the lead democrat wants to keep

the investigation bipartisan. i don't think mr. schiff even knows today what those documents are. >> we have talked a couple of times and you have hesitated on endorsing the idea of an independent commission, john mccain has been the biggest champion of this is aing at this point maybe it can't be done inside of congress. what do you say to that? >> listen, if we can get an independent commission, that means you have to pass a bill and the president will sign it. >> that's moving -- you were not there even two weeks ago. >> and then you have to debate about who will be on it. >> i have tom cotton on the committee and ron widen and we crossed all of the political divides and frankly, we have bipartisan support, serious republicans, marco rubio, susan collins all saying we'll go where the intel leads. >> i want to ask you about richard burr and your trust and faith in him. the white house used -- asked both devin nunes and richard burr to essentially help push

back against one of these new york times stories and they both did in some form or another. does that call into question senator burr's ability to be bipartisan in this and do you trust him? >> we've had some bumps, but i am working very closely with him right now? >> you trust him? >> i trust him that we will get this done and we have a list of witnesses that i think you will see that is comprehensive and we'll talk to everybody involved. >> is paul manafort apparently made a statement that he's willing to testify before the house and the senate intelligence investigations. when would we see somebody like paul manafort? >> what you have to do first is you have to get your information, and raw intelligence and build your case. you only bring in those kind of witnesses at the appropriate time. >> is that like a three-month, six-month, outline the time line here. >> what we'll do is have the public hearing and we'll continue to do as much as we can in public, but we have more raw intelligence that we have to go

through because when we bring in people like mr. manafort, we want to know not some spectacle. we want to ask the right questions. >> as you know, you brought up adam schiff and he's the ranking democrat in the house intelligence committee. he said there is more than just circumstantial evidence and that there is some -- some evidence of collusion that's going to come out. is that -- >> i'll simply say what i said at the outset. weeks ago when i was first getting started with this and i said this is the most important thing i've ever worked on. with what i know now i doubly believe that. it has to be done bipartisan and we have to get the facts out to the american people. >> you keep saying there is more smoke? >> there is more smoke. >> do you think there is a fire there? >> time will tell and what we know is the russians massively intervened and they're doing the same in france and germany. >> before i let you go, neil gorsuch, is it worth filibustering him, or do you believe he hava a vote.

>> bright guy, but i was very disappointed with his answers. he was not even to acknowledge the bedrock cases like brown versus board of education are part of our existing -- >> there's voting no and preventing a vote. where are you? >> time will tell. >> you have not made a decision on filibustering? >> i have not made a decision yet, and i am not pleased with his answers. >> senator mark warner, we'll see you later this week. thanks very much. appreciate it. when we come back, california governor jerry brown ♪ i can see clearly now

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welcome back. when jerry brown first became governor of california in january 1975 the number one song on billboard was elton john's cover of the beatles lucy in the sky with diamonds. he was here in d.c. for his first visit since president trump's inauguration and he didn't get a meeting with the president or anybody in the west wing. in his second go round as governor, he is the top official and in a state, a deeply blue one who is sharply at odds especially when it comes to immigration and that border wall. >> the wall to me is ominous. it reminds me too much of the berlin wall. when i see that 30-foot wall i worry somehow are they trying to deep me in or keep them out? i really think people ought to be careful because there's a lot of odor here of kind of a strong

man, a kind of a world where you want the ultimate leader here to be doing all of this stuff, and having a wall, locking the people in is one of those characteristics. i think america ought to be very careful when we make radical changes like a 30-foot wall keeping some in and some out. >> no, i understand that, but you have essentially, you could take the government to court. you could stop this and will you pull out every stop from keeping the wall from construction? >> i don't like the wall. to the extent it violates law i will enforce that. >> we're not going to sit around and play patsys and do whatever the hell you want and deport 2 million people. no, we're going fight and we'll fight very hard, but we're not going to bring stupid lawsuits and running to the courthouse every day and i would do the right, human and christian thing from my point of view.

you don't treat human beings like that. trump's supposed to be mr. religious fellow, and i thought we had to treat the least of these as we would treat the lord. so i hope he would reconnect with some of his conservative evangelicals and they'll hello him that these are human beings and they're children of god and they should be treated that way. >> needless to say there is a lot more to my interview with governor brown and we spoke about where the discussion went and where he's willing to work for the president and his advice for mr. trump since he governs more people than any other democrat. >> of course, the health care implosion on friday meant we didn't have as much time as we wanted to have with him and all of this is on our website, meet the press.com and we'll have much more with governor brown on meet the press daily. you know where to find that, on msnbc. >> not one, but two politically devastating gut punches this week. where does president trump go from here?

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welcome back. panel is here. you know, this week began with the first gut punch which was russia and the fbi. where is the state of the trump

presidency, tom? here we are -- tomorrow is day 67. we had the travel ban. it's been blocked twice, healthcare can't get done, now he wants to do tax reform and russia is expanding and this is not a presidency that will have a hundred days' event that will feel good. >> there say huge difference between standing before a crowd in kentucky as he did ten days ago ask repeating campaign promises and governing from 1600 pennsylvania avenue and getting things done. i think we can see in the next week or so that mitch mcconnell will begin to take control on the senate side of some of the issues, deregulation and taxation, for example, getting gorsuch through. those kinds of things will begin to lift, but it won't be trump who is getting that done for him. i really think that this has not been fatal for trump. no question about that, but how nimble he's going to be and whether he can change. we haven't seen much evidence of that in his private life or in his public life, and i think that's what weave got to watch.

>> it's interesting to me, his instinct is to want to work with democrats. there is an excerpt of the great robert draper piece on trump, and he wrote this and based on an interview that he did. trump seemed much less animated by the subject of budget cuts than the subject of spending pump. spend money to make money in the future and that will happen, a clearer keynesian liberalism, is that your party now? >> i think he's done with the right wing. >> if you buy stocks, one of them is the supreme court, that went up 400% this week and one is health care and it bankrupted and you have the military, the tax bill and the infrastructure and he'll bank on the other four going up and the supreme court went with -- i think you had the 2020 nominee here in mark warner. >> you can't be the democratic nominee and not support a

filibuster. >> that's it. >> he's run for president and he's going to go for chuck shumer and that is great from my perspective. >> ilian a does donald trump go to his democratic instipths now? >> i think that's 100% true. he'll move to the left and he's wanted to do infrastructure and he wants to do a big push on it, and the thing i found interesting this week is that he went to the freedom caucus and his pitch to them, his means of persuasion was he singled out mark meadows and he told republicans, you're going to lose. i'm going to campaign against you and people said to me, you know, it wasn't the best means of persuasion, but when he moves to his left he gets to sell people on things and say i'm going to give you things you're really going to like. so i think it will be interesting to watch him. i think that's much more the mode he likes to be in. it didn't work for him to recriminate people and pound them over the head.

so he's going to be much more effective when he's giving out goodies. >> how many democrats will he get if he moves left? >> the democrats of the party which stepped forward and extinguished this trumpcare bill, they're allowing the grassroo grassroots to lead them. >> there is one that he actually personally knows and it's chuck schumer and knows well and he became a republican, but if you recall in the back roger stone days in the '80s. he was railing for being too tough on the soviet union and he's a guy in business used to spending other meme's money and borrowing it and not paying it back. his mode is to spend a lot of money and it's interesting watching most of the republicans except the freedom caucus going along living life with whatever they want to do to change the ideology. >> the whole question is do these fiscal conservatives in congress go along with an infrastructure bill because they're giving the president leeway in his first hundred

days? we saw in health care that it's not likely, and i think it's because the president didn't know the policy details and he wasn't able to persuade them. >> can he do it on infrastructure? >> we've known him for a long time in his new york days and now as a campaign. the attention span is about that big. >> and that's why he's glad it's in the rear-view mirror, i guess. >> we'll do a quick 45-second break. endgame is coming up and a very public and un - life can be full of unexpected surprises.

having an emergency savings for the unexpected may help provide a little light in a possibly dark situation. the more you know. ♪ back now with endgame before i get to our little fun tease there that even hugh was intrigued about. i want to quickly ask, palace intrigue here. does the president reorient his own west wing staff? there's been any of that? is rips priebus -- >> the president needs to ask director comey if anyone in the white house is under investigation because they have to be separated out and tom remembers watergate and if anyone is they have to go and reince priebus isn't and paul ryan has to stay and they need to listen to mccon pell upon i

think he's right. >> they choose from former administrations and people who know the town. this is what happens when you staff your team with ideologues and people from right-wing media world rather than people who know anything about running -- >> there's nobody in there with legislative experience beyond pence. >> i don't think the problem is ideologues and i think the problem is lack of experience on capitol hill. for the president it's, you know, he doesn't understand the policy details. for paul ryan, i think it's been the story of this that's been undertold is he didn't sell this well. he didn't talk to journalists beforehand or the policy community, and i think that was perhaps the biggest flaw and the biggest mistake. >> the biggest knock you hear about paul ryan that it rings true, tom is here is this incredible policy wonk who hates politics and he took a job that was all politics. he knew he wasn't as suited for it as others wanted it to be. >> the president put his arms around it, but i think he's been

wounded in this quite honestly and nobody else wants that job and quite surprised, however, and i hesitate to use the phrase, naivety. >> doesn't aaron rodgers always start slow, though? isn't he always start slow in the. >> best line i've heard week is a day without a tweet is a very good day. >> it's also very hard to -- no matter how good of a politician you are to sell the idea of taking 24 million people's healthcare away. that is not sellable. >> in ryan's defense, i don't think he's been saying, gosh, it's harder. i think he's trying to tell his conference. >> yes. >> governing is different than being in the pop sessiooppositi. it's much harder. >> the bottom line at the end of this week is health care is 18% of our economy. it affects everyone in america in one form or another and this is not just a political game. this is not monopoly. they've got to find a way to get this settled and in the reagan

administration they put together pat moynihan and alan greenspan and they solved social security. >> and that's why they didn't do that, set up your own and buy yourself time. that would have been the other thing. >> stop the repeefl obamacare. take that sting of we need to take this thing away from obama. if you've got problems with it. fix it. that's what legislating is for. >> now i'm going to answer hugh's intrigue. march madness known for its heartbreaks and all things that could be applied to republicans this week, but one super pac was so sure that repealing obamacare was a slam dunk that they ran ads during march madness games thanking republicans to replace the affordable care act. it seemed to be a victory lap for a non-existent win. she came out against the plan. she was a "no" on this, and it was interesting where they were nervous. it was des moines, it was darryl issa was in there and you had identified those folks. >> she brusted her own bracket

is the way you look at it. >> but i don't know if anybody had a worse friday than paul ryan. i asked paul ryan about his bracket pick last week when i interviewed him and here's what he said to me. >> speaker ryan, do you have wisconsin in your final four? >> yes, i do, actually. i have them going all of the way, and i have a rematch with kentucky and we win this time. >> friday at 3:30 he pulls the bill and no more repeal and replace. friday night this is how with us wisconsin's season ended. >> oh, my goodness! >> oh, speaker ryan, i say this -- >> i don't want to -- look, he and i both love the packers together. so don't hold that against me. it was a tough night. >> it was. don't forget, neil gorsuch, neil gorsuch, neil gorsuch! i can stay here all day, neil gorsuch. >> you remind me of kevin bacon.

remain calm! all is well. that's all we have. we'll be back next week, i promise. if it's sunday, it's "meet the press "and let me hope one final four team survives for me. we'll be back. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ it's spring, and we can't wait to open our sheds and get working on our yards. scotts and miracle-gro are here to help.

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the man from finland cinnamon nous with the state of hockey. despite another loss yesterday, the wild are on their way to the postseason. mean while, for henrik zetterberg and the red wings, the incredible playoff streak is likely to end. mow it's all about giving joe lewis arena a proper sendoff. ♪