robert: i'm robert costa, i'll tell you about my conversation with president trump and the future of healthcare tonight on "washington week"." a consequential week for president trump and his administration. he faced a republican revolt over healthcare. >> i will not sugarcoat this. this is a disappointing day for us. president trump: we were very close. we had no votes from the democrats. robert: as f.b.i. director said mr. trump was wrong as he accused his predecessor of wiretapping. his former campaign manager agreed to talk about his financial ties with a russian businessman. and the republican chairman of the house intelligence committee says u.s. agencies may have

inadvertently collected communication by members of trump's transition team. yes, it was that kind of week. plus, president trump explains his unique relationship with truth and consequences. we make sense of it all with michael sherrer. yamis alcindor,, michael crowley, and film tucker. >> funding is provided by -- >> their leadership is instinctive. they understand the challenges of today and research the technologies of tomorrow. some call them veterans. we call them part of our team.

announcer: additional funding is provided by -- newman's own foundation, donating all profits from newman's own food products to charity and nourishing the common good. coup and patricia ewing, committed to cultural differences in our committee. contributions from viewers like you. thank you. announcer: once again from washington, robert costa of "the washington post"." robert: good evening. president trump wasted no time blaming the failure of the republican healthcare bill on democrats. he called me moments after house leadership pulled the bill from the floor. he didn't blame speaker ryan. they just came up short.

>> i told him that the best thing to do was to pull with this bill. obamacare. president trump: i think the losers are nancy pelosi and chuck schumer because now they own obamacare. 100% own it. and this is not a republican healthcare. robert: republicans spent eight years let's remember making promising to replace the affordable care act with a better, cheaper health plan. why couldn't they close the deal? and how big of a political crisis is this for president trump? >> it's a huge defeat, really a remarkable moment. the republicans have the majorities in the house and the senate and they control the white house. this is what they campaigned on. they couldn't get the deal closed because they couldn't appease the conservative members of the house, to try to win over the moderates. they couldn't figure out something that would work on this issue. now we have the affordable care act for the foreseeable future.

robert: you always hear about the hard liners, the freedom caucus. president trump talked to me about that on the phone. but also the moderates. >> what was important and remarkable about today was when they were trying to make deals with the freedom caucus and take out deals requiring companies to cover maternity and hospitalization, they were bleeding out on the other side. but they said this is what my constituents need. what you saw was a convergence of this republican party that has never really been straight the republican party anymore. there were so many tweeks to this party. and now it's a group of people that have marketably different agendas. robert: he goes to the house last night, says the president wants a vote. he wants everybody on record, yes or no, are you with him on his first legislative test? what does that tell us about ban non? >> i think there's a great irony

which is delicious for a lot of people who are not ban nonfans which is this is a monster that ban nonwas created when he was running breitbart, the conservative news cite. he whipped up conservative members against their leadership saying revolt. don't take half compromises and was -- played a significant hand in john boehner's demise as house speaker. and now the monster that he unleashed on the countryside has come back to get him. and even his own personal lobbying trying to talk down these people that he was rallying up a couple of years ago wasn't enough. so it's just one of those ironies in washington and topsy turvy things about the trump presidency that's a new reality. >> we have to get beyond saying that there's a republican control in washington. there's no coherent republican party in washington. what we discovered today is functionally there's no governing control.

that when we talk about republicans in the house, we're talking about at least two very different parties with very different priorities who are operating with no allegiance when it comes to taking votes with each other. i think that has huge implications. this wasn't just a failure on an energy bill or a transportation bill or something like this. this is the defining issue of what republicans have been running on for four elections. this is the thing that every time donald trump got on stage said we're going to repeal and replace obamacare and the crowd went wild. robert: michael, you spent a lot of time talking to the president. this is what he wanted to get through. he calls me on the phone. he starts immediately turning on the democrats. he said chuck schumer, the minority leader and nancy pelosi, he's blaming them. as we got past this partisan, he started talking about if obamacare explodes -- that was the word he kept using, maybe he

could come back take it off the shelf and craft a bipartisan bill with democrats. i said, would you be more comfortable with that? my sense is covering president trump that east a nonideological republican. he said a lot of people said i'd be better cutting a deal with the democrats. what's next on healthcare on everything? is this -- is he going to continue to be lockstep with speaker ryan? or can we expect a new kind of president trump? i want everybody on this. phil: i think he wants to get to tax reform first. he's got this big infrastructure plan. he wants $1 trillion on roads. he wants those big agendas before returning to hale care. you can see him taking a different approach. the failure for this is not for lack of trying. he was the ultimate chess master and he just couldn't do it. >> i wonder if there comes a point where he just discovers with tax reform, it's not going

to be much easier. what the house is proposing like a massive revamping on how we do it. that's a difficult thing to do with congress, bipartisan. i wonder if he turns to his people and says why am i losing because of these 30 people in the freedom caucus? why don't i just do something else? >> why doesn't he just turn to infrastructure? >> le -- he could. >> it has a way of never get done. that's not an o assist in the -- oasisi in the deser. this is a reflection of donald trump like not having a specific campaign platform, not being an ideological guy. there's a certain flexibility that comes with that. but if you had a marco rubio or jeb bush they would have had a repeal. at least guidelines that you start funneling the political

conversation into. but when you show up, no one's expecting you to get elected. it's total anarchy. i don't think it's going to work out much better -- >> will democrats play ball? >> i'm literally thinking -- the democrats that i talk to especially the freshman house republicans say i don't want to play ball with you. what we've seen is one party go all the way to the right. and it's exactly what they want. and now we're saying we had bernie sanders. why don't we just lay out what we want which is a single payer healthcare system? when i was listening to donald trump, sometimes he sounded like a democrat promising universal healthcare, proming all these things, something that the freedom caucus was not going to get behind. what we're going to do is hand donald trump a win by supporting some form of healthcare that he comes up. >> how much of you believe that

speaker ryan and the president have a relationship? he kept saying i don't blame paul. how much does this frey the relationship? >> there's this attempt to say that d democrats own obamacare. there's something preposterous about that spin, i mean, duh. to say this is chuck schumer and a nancy pelosi problems, just seems -- their base is going to be really upset about that. i don't think they're going to buy that line. robert: a major concession, the trump administration gave the freedom caucus the hard liners was the elimination of 10, what they call essential health benefits that insurance companies are required to cover under the affordable care act. those includes hospitalization, maternity care, prescription drugs and mental health and

substance abuse coverage. so we see the republicans moving in this right wing direction on healthcare, getting rid of these rules and these benefits so what's next on healthcare? could they do something piecemeal, michael? >> there's a coherent, conservative view on how health care could be better. it hasn't come up in this debate. but you allow people to get insurance for exactly what they want. you allow for high deductibles and tax money that you spend underneath those deductibles and you make healthcare a more competitive marketplace. this is part of that theory that if you're 25 years old, you shouldn't be buying health benefits that would apply to a 65-year-old or more controversially if you're a man you shouldn't be buying health benefits that apply to a woman or a woman for a man. it's not something i think they have sold to the american people. and i think -- there's a problem that the house republicans and

the conservative movement has sort of gotten all wrapped up in their own ideologies and have not made the case. they said obamacare is terrible. but they haven't made the case for what this vision is they want. robert: what does the republican party look like when they're not railing against the president's obama's healthcare law? >> it's a problem. they spent eight years being the party of no, trying to stop president obama. they have to govern. it's incumbent upon them to make things happen and they're not able to do it. one of the things of the policy issues that you just mentioned, they're not popular with the american people. had this bill even passed the house it would have gone to the senate. even republican senators were not going to support it because they represent states like ohio or west virginia or florida where, you know, people are not going to want to see those changes in their coverage. >> even today when i was talking to a republican, shortly before the bill was pull and i was asking him about something

simple asthma ternity care. he said i shouldn't have to pay for maternity care unless my girlfriend's trying to have a kid or we're trying to have a kid. i thought to him, what if she gets ovarian cancer, what if there's an unforeseen thing and it's related to the fact that she has to have kids? he paused and said hm i'm not sure about that. if you can't explain it to me as a reporter, how are you going to explain it to the american people? these are simple things for people to understand. when you get to tax reform and other things people might sit back and say what does that really mean? when you tell women, i don't think that men should have to pay for what you have because you're a woman and you should pay for more health insurance, that's kind of incredibly hard to sell. robert: i asked the president is there any lesson learned. he paused for a second, he said just another day in par dice. i said -- just another day in

paradise. he says he's the deal-maker. can he recover. >> i mean, bob, you and i were talking to senior white house officials in the days leading up to this failure and they were so confident that this deal would happen. they called president trump the closer that he could cut deals in real estate. he was the chess master. he was bringing people on the oval office, dinners, trips to the bowling alley in the white house. they thought his personal charm would get the votes and it just didn't get the vote. people were charmed by him and they still held to no. >> one thing i'm looking at this week, the fallout. how does this affect ban non, rinse -- priebus? but the week began with james comey testified before the house intelligence committee that president trump was wrong when he accused president obama of

wiretapping. he said there were no evidence to support trump's tweeted allegations. days later the chairman of the committee went rogue devin nunes to inform them of new intel reports that may have captured new communication by trump's transition team. the administration has neither apologized nor backed down from the president's unsubstantiated remarks. instead they doubled down. that prompted questions about mr. trump's credibility drying the damage that he's doing to his presidency with seamless endless free accusations an other falsehoods. "time" magazine's cover story about the president's views and falsehoods asks the provocative question -- is truth dead? michael scherer you tried to draw the president out on this

cloud that's over his presidency about how he engages with the truth about these stories he picks up and talks about information. >> yeah, so we are journalists and we think of truth and falsehood as a binary. we have to get our stories right. they have to be true and if they're wrong we have to correct it and fix it. donald trump, president trump has never really engaged with that same top nick this same way. he sees it as a negotiation. he's constantly trying to maneuver around and, you know, he spoke about truthful hyberbole. if you're selling a condo you're upselling and exadgerathe. and he still does it. even when comey comes before congress and says there's no evidence to back up this claim, trump's response is to negotiate. he was saying wiretapping in quotes and by the way the "new york times" they used that word "wiretapping" and did you see what devin nunes said?

that's something to look at. the other point he was making to me is i should get credit for the other things i have said in the past that have been disputed that have later come to be true. and he pointed to the fact that he had tweeted about anthony wiener's sexting coming back to haunt hillary clinton. he predicted brexit and he predicted winning the president. this is part of the negotiation. what's important is i have great instinct. i know what's going on here. it's a totally different model for how a president would deal with these issues. robert: is this why the white house and a lot of top advisors are so cagey to count ter president when he makes these types of claims? >> i think so because you don't want to be seen as pushing back on your boss and you don't want to be seen as defining a truth that he's not comfortable with or even seeing as though that you're not completely and utterly going on to the truth that he has and really signing

up to say whatever the president says is the truth, is the truth at that moment because you see that -- in his aides they might say one thing and they'll completely back-off and say this is what it should be. and really not at all. i feel like they're following his lead in the fact that there's no apology, there's no backtracking. there's no no, we might have had bad information. there's none of that. robert: what's the consequence of the storm scoming out? you had director comey calling out the president's accusations. then you have detch nunes, he's coming out with his version of events of possible surveillance on russia even though there's no wiretapping of trump tower. it's a barrage of information. how you do think the white house is handling it all? >> i think there are two consequences, one is after comey's sworn testimony by the way, the president's credibility is damaged. he insisted that obama had

ordered this wiretapping. he didn't just accuse obama of ordering it. he reasserting it again and again. he said evidence would come out to prove him right. we now have the f.b.i. director saying that's not true. if this issue of russia is going to hang over the white house. they're going to testify. this investigation shows no sign of ending. comey indicated that it would go on for a long time. robert: what did you make of the testimony? >> it was a double black eye for the white house. for comey to shoot down the tweet and then to say very significantly that the f.b.i. investigation includes the possibility that trump associates were cooperating with the russians. there's been a lot of attention on the tweets and the process and the kind of depressing fight in the house intelligence committee makes you wonder whether congress can investigate this. but it's easy to lose sight of

the big idea that the u.s. intelligence community thinks there's a sophisticated russian hacking and no one can prove that it swung the outcome but no one can prove it that didn't. it was a narrow election. the f.b.i.'s investigating the possibilities that people around trump were partnering with basically the kremlin maybe indirectly. that's just mind blowing, would be the biggest scandal in american politics in generations. and so that to me is the bigger story. comey saying they're pursuing that line of investigation and subsequently there were some fresh leaks. cnn had a story advancing that a little bit farther. they had a source in the intelligence community or f.b.i. saying that there was evidence that was leading some investigators to believe that this was a real thing that it wasn't just an open question. we're looking at it but they had their teeth into something suggesting there had been some

collusion. you just can't even game out the consequences of that being demonstrated. robert: this appearance, this volunteer idea by paul manafort to come before the house intelligence community and the committee in the coming days, it shows that the russia issue continues to linger over the trump administration. will michael scherer be able to clear anything on this front? >> he thinks it's better to face his accusers directly than to allow what's been going on for three months with manafort which is this drip and drag of stories of business contracts. he's had a very long relationship with people in eastern europe and russia. it's all at this point smoke. there's nothing that has come out that's clearly criminal about manafort. his lawyers an him have decided that it's best to put it on the table. the bigger question here is,

donald trump was able to -- in his business career and as a candidate cut a lot of corners and he got away with it because he was incredibly talented in other ways. when you're president it's harder to cut corners. the take away was this guy was going to figure out what happened. the f.b.i. director made very clear that i'm going to keep working on this until i know exactly what happened and then he suggested we don't know if he'll say everything but a lot of that will be made public at some future point. it's different than in a campaign. in a campaign if you do a crazy tweet about the ex-president the f.b.i. director isn't up on the hill the following month saying it's false. but when you're president the stakes are just higher. robert: we keep wonderi if the president is going to change. but you look at how he handled truth and consequences and defiance on "time" mag, -- magazine, defiance in

washington. how does this work out in washington? >> he's saying these things that are off the wall, proven to be untrue because there's no trust around the white house. and then you compound it with the fact that michael flynn at a minimum misrepresented his conversations with the russian ambassador. jeff sessions forgot his conversations with the russian ambassador. there's a credible gap. if this white house would just give an inch or two and acknowledge some of the facts out there and maybe even say, yeah, you know, some of these -- there were some contacts that in hindsight they don't look great but we weren't collaborating with vladimir putin. but there's total denial. make up a new story about wire taps and it fuels suspicion and it gets democrats like adam schiff -- robert: he's the house

intelligence committee. a major trump ally. his credibility is being questioned just like the president, phil. >> it is. he is acting more as a trump surrogate than as an independent leader of this intelligence committee. and he's handling very differently than the senator who -- that republican senator bur recross examination from north carolina who is leading the senate. >> -- the republican senator bu rr from north carolina who is leading the senate. >> it's one thing to say donald trump is an inexperienced politician. it's another thing to say can i trust this person? can i deliver on things? if i deliver this hale care bill is he going to turn around and give me what i need? it cuts away at his credibility and his political capital and his ability to get things done. that's how he's going to be judged and how he's going to judge himself because even as he goes back and forth with this truth, donald trump has to understand that today was an

epic fail and it played out on all the networks that he likes to watch. that's going to sit with him and it's going to make him think hard about what the next steps are going to be. robert: michael, is there anyone that can actually influence president trump when it comes to how he handles some of these conversationtial issues an bits of information that float his way? >> i think what happens in the white house more often than not it ends up being a team effort. you need to have a group of people coming to at the same time. robert: we're going to have to see what happens next week. thank you, everybody. our conversation continues online on the "washington week" extra where we'll talk about the meeting with the congressional black caucus and the nomination of neil gorsuch. you can fine that on pbs.orgwashingtonweek. i'm robert costa. have a great weekend.

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