>> deal or no deal? president trump and democrats agree again. but there is outage on the right. i'm robert costa. we take a closer look at these bipartisan hand shakes and the challenges ahead, tonight on "washington week." >> we're not looking at citizenship, amnesty. we're looking at allowing people to stay here. we're working with everybody. >> donald trump cuts another west wing deal with democrats. >> these were discussions, not negotiations. there isn't an agreement. >> breaking his campaign pledge to deport undocumented immigrants, the president agrees to protect dreamers and boost border security. but democrats say a wall isn't part of the package. >> ultimately, we have to have the wall. if we don't have the wall, we're

doing nothing. >> hard line conservatives are furious and warn of republican civil war. >> they won't be able to defend him anymore. >> while the fate of 800,000 young immigrants hangs in the balance, the president turns to the next front. >> more than ever, we now need great tax reform and great tax cuts. >> plus -- >> health care in america must be a right, not a privilege. >> senator bernie sanders unveils his "medicare for all" health care bill. and republicans roll out their new plan to overhaul the nation's health care laws. >> there are three choices. prop up obamacare. bernie care. or our bill. this is a defining fight for the future of health care and the republican party. >> we discuss it all with molly ball, of the atlantic. erica werner of the associated press.

and yamiche alcindor and peter baker of the new york times. >> celebrating 50 years, this is "washington week." funding is provided by... >> their leadership is instinctive. they understand the challenges of today and research the technologies of tomorrow. ♪[music] >> some call them veterans. we call them part of our team. >> additional funding is provided by dana-farber cancer institute. more at discovercarebelieve.org. newman's own foundation. donating all profits from newman's own products to charity and nourishing the common good.

the ethics and excellence in journalism foundation. the yuen foundation. committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you! once again, live from washington, moderator robert costa. >> good evening. president trump continues to court democrats, putting legislative progress over party loyalty. his latest deal signals a shift away from his signature campaign promise to crack down on all illegal immigration. just days after telling the republican controlled congress that they had six months to come up with a new plan to provide legal protection for young undocumented immigrants, trump made a pact with democratic leaders nancy pelosi and chuck schumer. but almost as soon as democrats

announced that new agreement, which included beefed up border security but not a wall, there was debate, if there was actually a deal at all. >> you cannot fix daca without fixing the root cause of our problem. we do not have control of our borders. so we need border security and enforcement as part of any agreement. >> immigration hard liners who are among trump's staunchest supporters see the move as a betrayal to the republican base. yamiche, you were here last week. we are so glad you're back. we're talking about another deal, but it's different. it's not a fiscal deal. it's about daca, about immigration. and there seems to be a lot of uncertainty about this one, among dreamers, the 800,000 here, and also all those lawmakers on capitol hill all week. >> well, this was as chaotic as a week as you can get. on one side, you have

republicans playing defense, also very confused about what the president actually agreed to. on the other side, democrats who wanted to kind of wave the flag and say we got another deal out of him but also had rank and file members telling me we're weary of what this deal -- wary of what this deal actually is. the spanish chairman said she actually was interested in having two separate bills, if there is a deal that has to do with border security, because a lot of her members are worried if they have to cast a vote for the d.r.e.a.m. act, they don't want to cast a vote that will hurt the family of the dreamers. what we really see here is a white house that is willing to do whatever it can to make the president look good. and republicans are realizing that. in some ways, they're very nervous. i talked to a member of the freedom caucus and i asked him, how is amnesty different from what the president is saying what he's going to do? which is giving up a path towards -- giving a path toward citizenships to dreamers and he had the longest pause and said, well, you know, i just want to

make sure that these kids -- i'm not really sure. you know, i have to go. he never answered the question. to me, that was the embodiment of all going on on capitol hill this week. >> that republican unease, it came through on your interview with house speaker paul ryan. the leadership in the congress seems to still be trying to navigate this agreement. >> yeah. well, it was interesting, what ryan had to say this past week. it was kind of shades of bill clinton saying as president, i'm relevant. i'm a president -- a president is relevant. ryan saying the president knowings that he has to -- knows that he has to work with the congressional majorities. does he know that? that has not been on display these past couple of weeks with these deals. but of course for anything to become law, it does have to go through the house and senate. and the house is where immigration reform has gone to die for years and years. and it's hard to see anything happening there unless trump really sells it. interestingly, ryan himself has

a long history on this issue of really being committed on it. but i'm not sure that that's going to matter, given the hardliners like steve king, dave brat, who might not go along with any deal. >> that is the irony of it, that even though paul ryan was cut out of this process, this is something he wants to do. he has been a leader behind the scenes on this issue and this is an issue where, even in the last congress, you had majority support for comprehensive immigration reform, much less something like the d.r.e.a.m. act or something to protect the daca kids. you are going to lose democrats on the left who don't like having any kind of ep enforcemet measures. you are going to lose republicans on the right. but the majority of members of the house of representatives and the senate do want to do something on immigration. it's a complicated issue. it's a tricky issue. it's the reason the last two presidents, republican and democrat, failed to push it over

the finish line. if there's anything i've learned talking to trump supporters, it's that they will rationalize anything he wants to do and blame the republican congress for not getting it done. so when he says, you know, mitch, get back to work, they're saying, yeah. why can't you clowns get anything done like the president says? they don't really mind if it's something he campaigned against. >> essentially you see already the defensive crowd in the white house about this criticism from the right. clearly, caught a little offguard. to have ann say now we're all for impeachment is a pretty stark thing. the fact is that they are a little unnerved. you heard sanders today at the white house podium say, wait a second, any deal we agree to should include a lot of different things. it might include things like not just like border security but things which people can probably get around or swallow perhaps. it might include restrictions on sanctuary cities. it might include, you know, the

raise act, a piece of legislation that would cut legal immigration in half to this country. i can't imagine the democrats going along with something like that. it's still very possible to see how, you know, a white house might take a harder line in order to make sure it doesn't lose its base, and then this deal, whatever we want to call it, blows up. >> sources i've been talking to say that the republican leaders in some ways are happy to see president trump play point person, mainly because the two presidents before him failed. and they want to see the white house basically have to take this over the finish line and say, okay, you think that you can get immigration reform done, actually show us how that actually happens. the problem with that of course is that trump -- president trump is not someone who is really steeped in policy knowledge. on the other hand, you have nancy pelosi and chuck schumer, who might end up writing the actual bill and might end up going through and negotiating the details. that's really problematic for republicans. >> well, the republican base, they usually are the people who erupt when an immigration bill

comes to capitol hill. can we expect steve bannon, the former white house steve strategist, breitbart, can they actually knock this whole bill off the playing field? >> i don't know. i think that's going to be a really interesting thing to see, because brit breitbart is freakg out about this. the big headline claiming people are burning their "make america great" hats and ann kohlter, laura ingram. on thon the other hand, other fs on the populist right, rush limbaugh, have been cautiously supportive. so, you know, i think it will be very interesting to see which was the dog and which was the tail, so to speak, when trump and breitbart were working together. was it -- was breitbart popular because people like trump, or was trump popular because people like breitbart? and if it's the former, then it's breitbart that has more to lose from this than trump does.

>> erica, it's not just immigration that leader mcconnell has to deal with. he's trying to move something on tax reform. how does this all play out on capitol hill this fall? >> well, it just creates an enormously complicated stew with really unpredictable outcomes on various fronts. i mean, the deal that was just last week, you know, kicking everything into december as far as spending and debt ceiling, even though the debt ceiling may end up, you know, going farther, democrats have leverage on these issues. and they want to use that leverage to get the d.r.e.a.m. act. i mean, it's because paul ryan can't go to the white house with 218 votes. it's not possible for him. so that gives the democrats leverage. >> you've called him an independent president, peter. you've made the case that he's so frustrated with his own party, he doesn't have those deep ties to the g.o.p., that he's able to navigate and operate in a different way. >> right.

to be clear, i said in many ways, he seems like the first independent president we've had since the civil war era. some took that to mean bipartisan or centrist. i don't think the last week proves that. i think it's a momentary tactical shift that can go a completely different way a week from now. he's not tethered to the party, to paul ryan, mitch mcconnell. the only living republican presidents voted against him. these are not people who see themselves as parts of a team. he's governed pretty strongly from the right. relying on these republicans and he feels like it didn't work. he didn't get the wins he wanted. now he's trying something different. it could change again tomorrow. but that is what we're talking about, somebody who is in fact -- he used the word flexible. in some ways, that is where trump has had a potential for a long time. he didn't choose to use it across the aisle in the beginning. now he's trying it out. we'll see. >> do democrats buy it? democrats have loathed president trump since day one. now they see their leadership

working with the white house. >> they do not buy it. the base or lawmakers, when you -- when i talked to democrats this week and last week, i should say, they say, okay, this looks like this might be good for our party, that he might be listening to our leaders, but this is still the president that attacks a lot of the people that are our base, that are really important to our base. so we can't just say, okay, we're going to completely ignore the last, i would say, year and a half of not only his presidency but his campaign and say we now trust him. they also think if his own republican leadership can't trust him, if mitch mcconnell and paul ryan can't trust him, how in the world would democrats trust him? i think the base, it showed how wary they were, because a lot of the immigration groups came out and said, look, we want a clean d.r.e.a.m. act. we don't know who this person is in the white house. we know he is someone who has talked very offensively about our communities. and in some ways, people are harping back to the idea of what he was talking back after

charlotte. they're saying -- after charlottesville. saying, look, that's the same person and i don't trust this person. >> last week, he seemed to wash away the sting of the charlottesville thing by focusing on the hurricane, being the president of all the people, and then he had this deal last week, seemingly a deal this week. then he comes back and mentions the charlottesville all over again, taking the same position with senator scott. that reminds democrats that this is not somebody who has suddenly become one of them. >> and luis gutierrez made a point to me that, you know, trump has fallen out with so many people in his own administration, the people who backed him for president, and gutierrez said i'd feel a lot better if the dreamers were his daughters and sons and son-in-laws, because it's only trump's own relationships that he doesn't get cross-wise with. >> he told me he also wouldn't vote for a d.r.e.a.m. act if it was attached to border security. so you have someone who is a top

member saying, i'm not going to support so far what the agreement is. >> molly, when you think about the other big issue facing both parties, it's taxes. republicans, are they going to be able to work with democrats on this issue? the president said this week that he may not even have a tax cut for the wealthy. he may even think about tax hikes. are we looking at a big tax reform package in this political environment, or a more incremental, smaller package? >> nobody really knows at this point. there are a lot of possibilities. you do have the unpredictable element of the president and what he might suddenly decide he wants to back or who he might suddenly decide he wan wants tok with. we've seen republican leadership going forward upon a plan -- the centerpiece would be a cut in the corporate tax rate. it would be a much smaller thing than the kind of large-scale tax reform envisioned at the beginning. any kind of tax reform really, really, really hard to do. so where they end up is both a mystery and a challenge.

you're not gonna get a bunch of democrats voting for corporate tax cut if that's all it is. but if he did decide to go in the populist direction and even raise taxes on the rich as steve bannon was talking about before he left, that would be a very interesting test of a lot of things. >> speaking of populist promises, peter, is the wall dead? is the wall going to happen? >> it's already being built. didn't you listen? [laughter] >> the truth is, there's been parts of a wall along the border now for years. it's always been a more complicated situation than the campaign rallies would make you think. so he tried to spin a little bit this week by saying, we're renovating the fences and walls that are already there and that counts at least toward the goal. look, it is the most central promise he made, build the wall, build the wall. a lot of other ones are easier to fuzz. a lot of people are willing to rationalize changes on his position on various things. this one is harder because it's so concrete.

>> and it's very popular with republicans. protecting the dreamers is broadly popular, even with republicans. but they are behind the wall and not, i think, as senator johnson said, as a metaphor, that it has to be a real wall. yes. so that's a real concrete thing. it is funny to see republican leaders who don't want to fund the wall and have rebuffed the white house's requests to fund the wall so far through trump's presidency, now saying well, we have to have the wall as a part of this. >> such a chess game. one day you're for this, the next day for that. let's turn to health care. two new plans were unveiled on capitol hill this week. vermont senator bernie sanders rolled out his "medicare for all." surrounded by 16 democrats who support the idea of a single-payer insurance plan. on the same day, four republican senators presented their last-ditch effort to repeal and replace the affordable care act. two rival packages on the republican side. but senator sanders pushing the democratic party, erica, in a

more progressive progression and getting some major senators to sign on. is this a sign where the democrats will go in 2018, maybe even 2020? >> i mean, republicans would certainly like us all to believe so. i mean, sanders, who is, you know, someone who -- outside of the capitol, he has a lot of support, can raise huge money. but is a man on his own inside the capitol. he doesn't have buddies among senate democrats. now he's putting all of them in an incredibly different position. all you need to know is that nancy pelosi, chuck schumer are not on board with his plan and kind of hem and haw when asked about it. so, you know, for republicans, this is the biggest gift they could get, because now they can paint all democrats as, you know, for government run takeover of health care. but for many democrats, it's kind of a lose-lose proposition, where you piss off progressives or you make yourself a target.

and -- yes. >> because you covered senator sanders on the campaign trail. is he trying to make this a litmus test for democrats, even if you're in a red state? >> i think he is. i think part of this has to do with the wall being a defining factor in this legislation. "medicare for all," anybody who covered bernie sanders, he would say "medicare for all," and it was something that he said and people understood when they were going to those rallies that he was going to say that. when you look at those 16 senators that signed on, to me it looks like a potential 20/20 list, because you don't want to be on a podium three years from now, when asked, how did you vote? where did you stand on this issue, not how did you vote, because it's not going to get on the floor, where did you stand on this issue, they have to be able to say yes to get on the progressive base. the base is saying while they know this might not be something that passes, they want to know that the democrats are bringing their will to the congress. but i think it's -- the hardest

part of this is the financing, the idea that -- >> we haven't found out anything about the cost yet. >> they're supposed to be looking into it. and senator sanders is offering a bunch of different kinds of taxes that could pay for it essentially. >> this is the democratic version of repeal and replace. for seven years, the problems had president obama there. they could say, we won't even pass repeal and replace, and we don't have to make it work and explained how it works, because we know it won't actually -- >> but it wasn't always a rally cry. >> my point is now it can be, without the actual practicality of having to actual vote on something. >> the fact that it's a rallying cry is an incredible thing. i was talking to a democratic hill staffer today, who was there when obamacare was being legislated. and remembering when the farthest left option was including a public option in obamacare. and single-payer was not even part of that discussion. but debate has really moved on

this issue. i think bernie sanders gets credit for moving the debate on this issue. it's a sign that there's a very active democratic base that wants these kinds of bold pledges, even if it's not possible to put it into action. and that's -- you know, it's always interesting to me when you have something that both parties think is a political winner. republicans think they can kill democrats on this issue. but you have a lot of democrats who think this is good politics for them. and, you know, that someone like donald trump, who in a way ran on universal health care, proves that there is some kind of support across the political spectrum for something like this. >> erica, leader mcconnell remains wary, even as the democrats are making all these moves on their side. republicans still frustrated about what happened in the summer with their bill failing in the senate. they have senator graham, cassie from louisiana, this block grant plan to give federal money to states. but mcconnell seems to be wary of bringing anything to the floor. seems like this is more

messaging, ahead of the september deadline. talk about that deadline, why all this is coming up right now. >> right. so they have until september 30 to be able to pass a health care bill in the senate that would not be filibustered by democrats due to these complicated budgetary rules called reconciliation. so senators graham and cassidy are rushing to try to get their bill on the floor before then. but they are not getting a ton of real support from leadership. they don't have cbo, congressional budget office cost estimate, which is necessary. and mcconnell's stance has been kind of show me the votes and i'll put it on the floor. >> and the president has been supportive of graham and cassidy but hasn't been making calls, it seems. >> he's been paying more lip service. that was after senator graham basically called him out, that he issued a statement that was supportive but hasn't really been doing anything. >> mitch mcconnell wasn't health care over and done with.

this is basically a rogue effort for like a hail mary pass, to makes metaphors, i guess. but it's not getting the traction that they want among their colleagues. >> it is incredible to see both parties trying to do this thing, which is pass some sort of health care that works, because on the campaign trail, especially for the people who voted for obama, then voted for trump, i heard over and over again that health care was a thing that was on the back of their minds. either they were a small business owner that was mad at obama or they were very sick and wanted more health care and it was too expensive for them. i think americans overall, if we get to 2018 or 2020 and there's been no resolution on health care, the american population is going to be very depressed about that. i don't know what that's going to mean overall for the polls. >> thanks, everybody, for joining us. we all know, if you're watching this show, you're probably a huge fan of ken burns. before we go, we want to remind you to watch this latest documentary about one of america's longest wars.

it starts this weekend. here's a preview. >> it was fought in the jungles and in the white house. it was fought in america's streets and colleges. and living rooms. and we continue to ask, what happened? the vietnam war. >> you can watch the premier of the vietnam war this sunday at 8 p.m. on your pbs station. as always, check your local listings. and our conversation will continue on the washington week extra. we'll talk about the president's decision to revisit the charlottesville protest and why he keeps blaming both sides for the violence. you can find that later tonight at pbs.org/washington week. i'm robert costa. have a great weekend! ♪[music]

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tomorrow. some call them veterans. we call them part of our team. >> additional funding is provided by newman's own foundation. donating all profits from newman's own products to charity and nourishing the common good. the ethics and excellence in journalism foundation. the yuen foundation. committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you! >> you're watching pbs.

narrator: a kqed televis♪on production. ♪ [ alarm blaring ] [ birds chirping ] [ blaring continues ]