>> dickerson: welcome back to "face the nation". i am john dickerson. the "new york times" chief washington correspondent is david sanger and he detailed, srgs covert cyber attacks against the north korean missile program under the obama administration in the paper and he joins us now to discuss this latest reporting. welcome, david. before we get to your specific report, reporting, president trump is very focused on north korea. give us a sense of why you think he should be. >> well, when president obama leftovers he made it pretty clear as president trump said there is one big military problem out there. president trump has never quite said what that is, but clearly it is north korea, and it is north korea because in the last year and a half of the obama era, the north koreans made huge progress in both nuclear tests and in bringing in a new generation of missile technology. eventually, that eventually,

maybe two years from now, maybe three, maybe four, but not that long, is going to be able to reach at least the west coast of the united states. so that time frame for dealing with this problem which has been kicked down the road by president after president after president is really now. >> dickerson: and you detailed the cyber attacks used to try and keep that time frame really long? >> that's right. so the key to this right now is keeping the north koreans from learning how to get that icbm across the pacific, and the meant gone with the help from the intelligence agencies work for many years to come up with ways to do this using cyber technology, to actually interfere with the way that the north koreans could send their launches, in fact the origin of the story is that colleague and i who worked on nuclear issues for a long time were sitting around one day last spring thinking, do you think, just falling into the, they are falling into the ocean too fast and he went back and discovered

the design of this miss still is based and i an old russian design had a failure rate of about 13 percent when the russians were doing them, and that the north korea krans were running a failure rate of 88 percent. now a lot of things could explain that, the north koreans are not the best manufacture in other words the world, you know, they are not the best weld in other words the world, but clearly something else was making this worse, and that was it. and then there is president obama who looked across the spectrum of our defenses and said this missile defense we spent $300 billion building since the eisenhower era, the stuff that is up in alaska and california. >> dickerson: that shoots it out of the air. >> that shoots it out of the air has a failure rate of about 56 percent under ideal conditions. so he said, this is not going to defend us against the problem. >> dickerson: so have the north korea north koreans figured this out? >> one of the reasons we have are pretty clear they have an

investigation underway and figured out somebody was messing in their system so we wrote ahead and wrote a story carefully in a way we thought would not provide the technical details that would allow the north koreans to defeat what the united states is doing, but it is clear we have a big issue, several big issues here. one is, is this enough? and that's a big issue that mr. trump is going to have to go deal with. second big issue is, are there other alternatives? do you negotiate with the north koreans? which a lot of people say we should. president obama decided not to. do you take more decisive action? do you try to attack these launch sites can i netcally? >> dickerson: you mean militarily? >> militarily, right, you blow them up. if you do that, and you miss some, you run the risk of starting off another war in the korean peninsula and no one wants to go do that. so the russia story is a fascinating one. the tweets are as neigh diversion, but in the end, at some point president trump is going to have to sit down and actually focus on a few threats like this one. >> dickerson: all right, david

sanger thank you so much, a fascinating piece. and we will be right back with our panel. >>

>> dickerson: one of the top items on the president's legislative agenda is the repeal and replacement of obamacare, health & human services secretary dr. tom price joins us from atlanta to give us an update. secretary price, the president said that he would have a replacement for affordable care act on day one and then more recently he said it was more

complicated an issue, healthcare that anyone would have guessed. where is. does the president's plan stand at this point. >> john, thank you so much, so good to be with you today. before i answer that let me just say it is an incredible privilege for me to serve it is a health & human services secretary. the mission of hhs is to improve the health and safety and well-being of the american people, and right now, across the country, there are many individuals who have a challenge from healthcare access and cost of insurance in the individual and small group market and that's what we want to focus on, and there are literally millions of folks who have either, unable to afford their insurance or pay a premiums, premiums are up 25 percent over the last year, almost 100 percent over the last three to four years, so what we want to make certain is that we are being true to the principles of healthcare which is a system that is accessible for everybody and affordable for everybody and of the highest quality, making sure we have incentivized innovation and empowering patients through accountability

and transparency, that's the plan we are working on and we look forward to moving it very, very soon. >> dickerson: the president has said the following about what the plan will do. he said it will off being care for more people .. at lesser cost. he said people will have access to the doctor that they want and the plan that they want and it will be paid for without touching medicare. is all of that still true? >> absolutely, and i think it is important for the american people to appreciate. and the speech that the president gave this past tuesday nights, what he did is outline the priorities for the american people. they want a system where the states have the flexibility and authority, authority is returned to the state for the regulation of health coverage. they want to make certain they can buy across state lines. they want to make certain that preexisting illness and injury is not -- makes certain it is covered from an insurance standpoint. they want drug prices to come down. he said something also very important about lawsuit abuse. he said we ought to address the issue of lawsuit abuse and the practice of defensive medicine where we are wasting hundreds of

billions of dollars every single year so these are the priorities the president has outlined and they are consistent with the priorities that we are moving forward with that health & human services and we are very, very excited about the opportunity. but once again, respond to the needs and the concerns and the fears, frankly of the american people about the healthcare system that they currently find themselves in. >> dickerson: one of the fears people currently on the affordable care act have is they will not have it after these reforms are put in place and there seeps to have been kind of different claims about whether the 20 million or so who are on it will be able to continue their coverage. people in the administration have said absolutely yes, they will be covered. others have said that is a goal. those are two different things. which is it? >> well, i think our goal is to make certain that every single american has access to affordable coverage that is of the highest quality. , you know, it is often, what is often times missed, john, there are 20 million americans across this land who are exposed to the penalty of either chosen to take the penalty, not purchasing

insurance or taken a wave and the reason is, waiver, because the federal government dictated to individuals what they must buy, what kind of health coverage they must purchase. so what our goal is, what the president's goal is, is to give people choices, to let them purchase the kind of insurance that they want for themselves and for their family, not what washington forces them to buy. this is a real important dipping shun between where we are right now in that individual and small group market and where we want to go. >> dickerson: so under the affordable care act now i don't have to worry about losing coverage, i won't be so expensive i won't be able to afford it? >> well, it is becoming expensive right now, as i mentioned the premiums are going up the deductibles if you are a guy or gal out there making 50, $60,000 and you have a couple of kids your premium by and large is somewhere between eight and $12,000 a year. you don't have that kind of money, so you may have a card, you may is have an insurance card but you don't have care because you can't afford the deductible in order to get the kind of care that you need. so our goal is to bring those costs down and the way you do that,

again, is through flexibility and allowing states to have the 36ability to care for their vulnerable populations that's see fit, choices for patients all across this land, making certain that they can purchase what they want and not what washington says they must buy. making certain that the doctors are able to provide the kind of care that they believe is most important, not, again, responding to what washington tells them they must do. so we have a lot of wonderful opportunities to make certain, again, that the american people are able to afford the kind of care that they want. >> dickerson: final quick question on medicare, mr. secretary, speaker paul ryan said it may still be an open question about whether president trump really doesn't want to touch medicare. is it an open question? might there be a back door way that the president will go back on his campaign promise not to touch it either for current retirees or anybody in the future? what is the final bottom line here? >> i will tell you what is not out of question is we believe in the guarantee of medicare for our seniors. the challenge that we have as crowell know and your viewers know, is that medicare

is, some folks have said going insolvent or broke, within a ten year period of time we won't have the money in the medicare program to be able to pay the benefits to seniors in this country that has been promised to them. we don't think that is appropriate. so we believ we believe strongle guarantee of medicare and make certain it is a viable financially secure program going forward. so that seniors now and in the future know that it will be there for them. >> dickerson: all right, mr. secretary, sounds like a guarantee with perhaps some changes issues maybe not, but we are out of time. the i reappreciate you being with us and i appreciate your time. >> thanks, john. it is good to be with you. >> [piano playing slow tune]

make your emergency plan today. >> dickerson: and we are back with our political panel. julie pace is the white house correspondent for the associated press. ed o'keefe covers politics for the "washington post", we are also joined by cbs news political analyst slate's jamelle bouie and ramesh ponnuru, sr. editor of the "national review". donald trump gave his most sustained public comments that were restrained, the word presidential is used a lot, then saturday, a series of tweets that seemed the opposite of that. where are we now going into

monday with the trump presidency? >> it was incredible whiplash this week. i think we have to give the president credit for the speech he gave on tuesday night. it was a side of him we don't often see, it was restrained, it was traditional, he got into some of the agenda that he wants to see going forward, but it just quickly gets over taken in some cases because of actions by people with jeff session whose department totally be up front with the congressional committee when he was doing his confirmation hearing but then it is president himself who goes out on saturday and distracts with these series of tweets. and the overarching problem for him is he is going into a week that is going to be policy heavy. a new rollout of the vettings eo and then a rollout of healthcare, and the success or failure of healthcare is going to be one of the measures by which his swear presidency is judged on, and to distract from that, to not go into this week with a sense of focus i think really hampers his administration. >> dickerson: 0, ramesh on that .1 of the things that made republicans happy about this

speech is it was focused. the president hits the mark of a speech like that, and it is important when you have a big piece of legislation, and now the worry is back to distraction. >> i think there was a very short sigh of relief that came from capitol hill republicans, but i think there is a connection between what we saw on tuesday night with the president's speech and what we saw on saturday morning with the tweets, which was the president thought he hit a home run with the speech. he was getting great positive reviews, and purportedly he was furious that story moved on to attorney general sessions misleading testimony in congress, and that is what apparently set him in this mood where he sends these tweets. one other thing about these tweets i think really is remarkable, he is alleging explicitly a nixon watergate level conspiracy on the part of the previous administration against his own presidency, and then he starts commenting about the apprentice within an hour. i mean, this is just a

remarkable set of things, and it makes cow wonder how certainly you can take the things he is saying. >> dickerson: and also after a speech which on tuesday night he says there said there is no more time for trivial fights and the apprentice would probably be in the trivial category. ja legal the question for you is, when the president takes to twitter it is often as a strategic move to distract from one thing the and move to another. do you see strategy in what was happening yesterday? >> i see some strategy in he wants to regain the attention of the media, the attention of everyone from these sessions controversy, i think we should not overstate the degree of strategy here. we have seen over the years, over the last 24 months that trump is impulsive, that trump is very self involved, you might say, and so this can also just well be trump lashing out as trump does. i will say one quick thing about last tuesday's speech. what was relatively more calm

and serious, than most of trump's addresses to the public, it should be said that some of the policy contempt there is just, was just as extreme and just as aggressive as we have seen in his less stable moments, you can pick your own word, in those moments. so for example in the speech he announced the creation of an office that, dedicated to publicizing crimes made by undocumented i immigrants which has two problems, the first is that it prunes undocumented are responsible for more crimes and the second is that it is a stigmatizing and creates an atmosphere that people are creating harm to immigrants, and trump's tone shouldn't distract from that. >> dickerson: and speaking of which you talked about unity, unifying with democrats and yet doing things that va mel just described, they are not going to be in the mood to unify. >> not at all and they weren't -- i mean, they fled the chamber

as fast as they could because, having essentially held their nose throughout the whole thing and they even said, look, we see no reason to work with him. he has made no real attempt to make any, you know, overtures to us, why should we bother? and i think the fact now even today, we are seeing the sentiment on other programs raised down about the leader of the intelligence committee shows you to what extent this really spreads. it spreads all the way even into the investigation, into russia, there is no appetite up there among democrats to cooperate with this president, because they are convinced that he is just so tarnished and they see no political benefit. whether that works for them ultimately remains to be seen, but i think it is a real testament to the poisonous nature and the fact he has done nothing so far, at least in their view to fix things. >> dickerson: mark warner working very hard to -- >> right. >> -- to keep the support there for his chairman richard burr, and in his comments, jewel, i can't i want to ask you about the substance of president

trump's russia policy because there is a lot of talk about russia and the connection and all of that but what is happening with respect to actual position on russia. >> this is an interesting conversation that is happening in the white house against the backdrop of all of these revelations about people meeting with the russian am bags for. the president came into office talking about striking a deal with russia and it hasn't quite been defined but the broad buckets include cooperation on the islamic state, ukraine, some kind of negotiations over arms control and i am told he has been sending signals both to his advisors and to allies that this may not be the right moment for that kind of deal. a couple of reasons why. one is that the white house is very concerned legitimately about some treaty violations that russia has had involving a missile launch a few weeks ago but there are other factors. you have some new voices in the room with the president who are tougher on russia than he has been in some of his previous advisors have been. his european allies that are learning to speak the language of trump, talking to him about a deal, you don't want to make a bad deal with russia.

you don't want to make a weak deal with russia, it is interesting they are picking up on the cues and frankly it underscores the political climate right now for him to have a president the moving forward on a robust deal with russia against all of these questions about his relationship i think even he, and his advisors are realizing that would be pretty difficult to strike that kind of deal in this climate. >> dickerson: ramesh, let me switch to obamacare here from russia. and ask, where do you think things are as the house leaders begin their process and as the white house sort of cops along with them, what is the state of play with respect to replacing obamacare in congress and the white house? >> i think there is considerable confusion and disagreement still among republicans. i think that the congressional republican leadership has its own basic sense of where it wants to go. it wants to have a tax credit driven strategy that provides coverage to a lot of people, even in a post obamacare world,

but there is a significant number of conservatives in congress who don't want any part of that, and if the administration is not being entirely clear about where it stands on this basic divide among republicans. normally, congressional republicans in charge of congress, with the republican president would be looking to the administration to set their direction on this kind of issue. this time, they are not, or at least that direction is not being provided. >> it is fascinating in the context of our friend paul kaine in the post, he said more than 160 house republicans have never worked before with a republican president. they are used to blocking, attacking, they are not used to running with the ball and we are seeing this every day up there, i mean, all of the other noise about russia and whatever the president is tweeting about or saying or doing they don't know how to deal with this issue and they are going to have real trouble. to hear the secretary here now donning your questions about the specifics of what this outline will look like, they are allegedly working off his blueprint he wrote as a

congressman and even that isn't able to generate enough agreement. if you have as many as 40 house republicans that are concerned out there wanting to stand in the way because they don't think it is conservative enough or costs too much money that's tend of the game there won't be healthcare reform if they can't get it out of the house and if they can't find democrats to work with them and they don't want to. >> dickerson: well the democrats definitely don't want to work with them. >> it is almost a perfect storm of dysfunction for the effort to get, to repeal the affordable care act because you have congress people who have not worked with a republican president and have very little experience with this legislation, you a white house that is arguably in in disarray or at least is not -- does not have the kind of experience that you need to sheppard major pieces of legislation through congress. you have a president whose stated goals for reform are count one, run kind of counter to what congressional republicans say they want. and the of course you have democrats who have just decided largely to say, hey, we will let you take care of this and we won't really

help out. there is a time here too that as time goes on this becomes more and more difficult, and so an. >> dickerson: it is a political matter. >> it is a political matter, we may already be approaching the point politically where there isn't that much to do, because it is just opposition is building, voters are speaking out, in the opposition and democrats are really rallying their side against it. >> dickerson: july i can't, one thing i heard from price, he said the promise of medicare will be there. when donald trump was a candidate he, no tinkering, no how. >> absolutely, promises are different, promises is a whole different thing, the promise is there but the form of sit different. >> and the president in the campaign said that over and over and over again that will come back to haunt him if an eventual package does make changes. one thing that is interesting about this moment that we are entering is, trump is now going to have to really be a president who bets involved in legislation if he wants to get this through. you people, lawmakers on the

hill who want to hear from him. they want to pick up the phone and give him a call. we don't know if he is capable of doing that. this is going to be a big test for him as a president. >> dickerson: ramesh, the president, the reason paul ryan wants flexibility on med compare is to find money for all of the other things president trump wants to do. >> the point julie made about the -- it is an important one. because there are over 40 conservative republicans are holdouts and can't pass anything, but are they holdouts if at some point president trump is saying i need you to replace obamacare, i understand you have got some problem you have with this legislation but it is decision time are you going to be responsible for defying me, hurting my presidency and keeping obamacare on the books? i don't think those 40 will stay 40. >> dickerson: he still has political power. i will ask you about the -- immigration reform. the day of the speech, there is is a little notion that president might support permanent legal status, have a job, pay your taxings you won't

have to worry about getting deported. what did you make of that. >> twice in february he had private lunches with people where he raised this issue. repeatedly in public he hasn't brought it up. so one wonders what is his stated goal here? you know, all he really talked about was that immigration victims crime victims office which is not going to be a very busy office, frankly, because there are, they are isolated and very high profile examples of this but it is not widespread. what is widespread and what is causing a lot of trouble and concern for people right now is the really uneven enforcement of immigration law, the hispanic congressional caucus to their credit has done a good job of tracking this and the examples of, you know, 22-year-old arrested after speaking out in a press conference about them is being sent back to mexico. a mother who was checking in with ice for years being sent back to mexico. >> dickerson: in other words, it is not just -- >> all over the country, it is not the -- these are good

people, no criminal record at all and the confusion this is causing with very little congressional oversight where the president is talking about doing it and waiting for him to say what he is going to do is just incredible and causing great confusion. >> dickerson: all right. we are going to have to leave it there. thanks to all of you and we will be back in a moment. >> i ordered the soup... of course, ma'am. my apologies. excuse me, pardon me. what's not surprising? how much money matt saved by switching to geico. could i get my parking validated? fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more.

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[music] >> dickerson: thanks for watching "face the nation". until next week i am john dickerson.

>> okay, leeza. we're ready for you on set. >> thanks, guys. >> i'm walking to set with our ladies. >> we're gonna do a last, final mike check. >> of course. all right. have a good show, everybody. >> female announcer: the following is a paid presentation for dr. denese skinscience. >> male announcer: and now the exclusive premiere of "winning the wrinkle war," examining how powerful age-renewing and youth-building ingredients can actually deliver incredible results like these in just 14 days. >> female announcer: and transform your skin like this in only 60 days. >> male announcer: but first, let's join reporter and emmy award-winner leeza gibbons. [ cheers and applause ] >> hi, ladies. thank you. thank you so much, and welcome. i'm excited about our program today because we're talking about winning the wrinkle war. i'm 57 years old, and if you're like me, you're on the front lines of this battle. and that's because we have maturing skin. you know wham