>> under pressure from the president, tom price resigns. i'm robert costa. we discuss a week of white house setbacks, controversies, and the new republican tax plan, tonight on "washington week." >> fear and desperation in puerto rico. >> this is not a good news story. this is a "people are dying" story. this is a life or death story. >> the trump administration defends its response to hurricane maria. >> i am proud of the work that's being done. i am proud of americans helping americans. friends and strangers alike. >> nine days after the storm, more than three million americans face dire shortages. >> we're going to cut taxes for the middle class, make the tax code simpler and more fair for everyday americans.

>> president trump rolls out his tax overhaul that he says is pro-growth and pro-family. but democrats are skeptical. >> it's little more than an across-the-board tax cut for america's millionaires and billionaires. >> is the g.o.p.'s failure on health care an omen on taxes? >> judge roy morris! >> and why is the alabama election sending shock waves through the republican establishment? we kohr it all -- we cover it all with susan davis of npr, jeff zeleny of cnn, yamiche alcindor of the new york times, and michael scherer of the washington post. >> 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. 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! once again, live from our nation's capital, moderator robert costa.

>> good evening. tom price stepped down as health and human services secretary late friday. his resignation was the ultimate price for using private jets and military aircraft for government business. price had taken more than two dozen chartered flights since may, totaling more than $400,000. price also used military aircraft for trips to europe, africa and asia this summer. three other cabinet members are also under scrutiny for their travel expenses. treasury secretary of state teef mnuchin -- steve mnuchin. you think about secretary price, he's been in congress. he's a washington insider. he knows the rules. he knew, as a public servant, that this information would likely get out there. where is the judgment? >> i think that's a great question. he knows the rules. he also has been one of the leading people who criticized democrats for doing this.

the sound bites this week of him blasting nancy pelosi for flying on a private plane. i think the judgment is, when you become a cabinet secretary, you reach a different level. you have staff around you. someone should have hit the stop button here and not allowed all this to go. we've talked to a lot of people. a lot of theories abound. one is there are a lot of members of this cabinet who are wealthy. a few who have their own fleet of planes or their own planes and they fly. so it seems like, well, if they're doing that, perhaps so can i. but that is not what the law really allows. even if it was legal, a new instructive from the omb going out to the white house chief of staff on friday evening says that just because something is legal does not mean that you should do it. so i think the overall -- overall, this is another friday night firing. we've seen a lot of them. but this is the first cabinet secretary to be shown the door here. but i think also it's slightly more than optics. we asked the president if he had

confidence in him. but also, he didn't get the job done. he was hired to get health care through. that doesn't happen. why keep him around? >> it's also a reaction to the first few months in this administration, where nobody really had control of everything that was going on. nobody was really minding the store. you know, one of the things we found out is senior white house aide was on some of these flights. it wasn't as if, you know, the health and human services secretary was off doing this freelancing with no one knowing. the white house was flying with him, you know, a $20,000 flight to philadelphia from d.c. i mean, that's just not a flight you take, if you live here. >> so when you're on capitol hill and you've been there this week as well, yamiche, are republican lawmakers standing back and saying what's going on with this administration? because it's not just price. >> i think price was the most surprising to them, because a lot of the other members of the cabinet that have done this as well didn't come from congress. price was there for the ethics wars over the last 10 years, there when congress cracked down

on private plane usage. so the thing that i heard the most is they were just amazed at how bad of a decision it was to do that. and i think that's why there wasn't really a lot of people defending the tom price this week. it's just not very defensible, particularly when you think of the broader point that the president campaigned on, drain the swamp. >> i think in this case, i think about what jeff just said, this idea that you have a cabinet filled with people who are wealthy. betsy dubois is footing the bill for all her flights. tom price may be saying i can also keep up with the joneses in this cabinet. they're just feeling among capitol hill but also among trump's base that they voted in a billionaire, so that when people are asking voters about mar-a-lago and asking about his flights and the fact that he supposedly called the white house a dump, people kind of laugh that off and say, well, we know we voted for a billionaire. in this case, you see the

president saying, i'm the billionaire, i might have the brand of over the top, but i don't want any of those headlines actually going to my administration. that's why i think tom price lost his job. >> i was told that one thing that infuriated the president more was when tom price went on fax news and said i'll do an unprecedented act of paying $52,000 for my seat on these flights. but that doesn't even begin to cover the jet fuel. i'm told that actually hurt his case, not made it. >> one other story line to keep eyes on here is this is yet another employee of the president he has thrown under the bus. i'm not defending what price did. but it wasn't illegal what price did. >> these were approved trips. >> yes. and so once again -- and we seem so have this every three weeks, when sessions was taken to the woodshed. priebus is out, bannon is out. the president is able to just push aside people. i think there's going to be, over time, an effect of that,

because everyone works for the president knows they are just an employee. and depending on the day of the week, they could be gone the next day. >> the house oversight committee is looking into all this. >> and they want answers. the top democrat said tom price being gone isn't good enough. we want a full accounting. other members are going to want to know more as well. >> we talk a lot of times about the cabinet and administration being in chaos. i think this kind of plays well for the president. this looks, to a lot of people, like, oh, the president is looking at this, looking at this person who started acting, quote/unquote, swampy. so you know what? i'm not dealing with this. i think he's going to reference this and say, you know what? you voted me in to do a job. i'm trying to make sure there are people here that understand that taxpayer dollars are important. >> this is a story of journalism as well. politico did a great story on this. the veterans affairs secretary went to wimbledon tournament as part of an official trip,

sight-seeing in july. we see with pruitt, his trip on a plane, ryan zinke. it goes on and on. we're going to leave it there, though, with secretary price, and we're going to turn to puerto rico, because it has been nine days since hurricane maria slammed into the island. and the u.s. virgin islands. since then, residents have struggled to survive. without electricity, clean water and a serious shortage of food and medicine. on thursday, president trump waived a restriction on foreign ships delivering cargo to puerto rico. but washed-out bridges and roads are making it difficult to deliver supplies from the ports in san juan. the sluggish response is in contrast to the president's praise of fema relief efforts on the island, raising questions about the administration's crisis management. reading every story about puerto rico, you're just struck that, one, we don't know the extent of this strategy. and two, these are americans.

and not everyone is talking about puerto rico in those terms, but it's so important to remember, these are americans and they're in a lot of trouble. >> it's super important to remember that these are americans, because the last time we had a very big tragedy, and connected to a hurricane, you think about hurricane katrina, the fact that so many got upset because we started calling americans refugees when they started going to other states. a lot of that had to do with people feeling they were not being treated the same way because of the color of their skin. here you have puerto rico. people are saying, look, this cannot be another katrina. democrats are already starting to seize on that messaging, saying this is president trump's katrina. i think it's a little too early to say that, but there are images coming out of puerto rico that very much mirror the images of katrina. i think what made katrina defining for president bush is two things. one, you had reporters really doing these fiery interviews

with fema where officials seemed to not know anything. two, you had stories of people dying as they were waiting for aid. i think this is something that will turn this story into a katrina if this happens. >> when we start to ask the question, is this the katrina for trump, it really comes down to the person asking the question. you had the mayor of san juan saying this is not a good news story. but then the acting head of the department of homeland security said it is a good news story, because there have been limited deaths. havthere have been at least 16 deaths. the white house keeps saying everything is going well. >> the words do not match the images on the screen. we know that the president watches these images. so i think a couple things. one, as we enter the ninth, 10th day of this, the president is planning on visiting puerto rico next week. if he's able to get down there. a couple things. a president's attention and the president's megaphone is unique. they can focus attention through donations, through other things.

for several days, he was in the u.n. last week, then he was talking about football. so he says he was not distracted. of course you can do many things at once. but the attention of the president was indeed distracted, because he was not using his voice to talk about puerto rico. i do think now their full attention is on this. yes, there are many problems with puerto rico, even on a sunny day, no doubt about this. but there is a huge issue here going on. and it's important to point out it's an acting secretary of homeland security. this government is still not filled. there are undersecretaries still not in position. i think that's a very important problem. >> i think the important contrast, when you're talking about leadership, is how much focus president trump put on preparing for, getting in front of cameras, telling people about it, and then showing -- the white house released photos of these meetings at camp david that he was on top of the issues in texas and in florida, two states that just happened to be filled with republicans, his voters, very politically important to him.

i think -- it is striking that it was only monday. we went through that whole weekend of him going to alabama, talking there, him starting this dust up about the nfl. whether the government was working on it, it is undeniable that the president approached this third hurricane differently than the first two. >> and sue, when you think about capitol hill, speaker ryan has been engaged in this, senator rubio of florida. can we expect the resources to be provided to puerto rico later this year in the budget? >> absolutely. it's important to remember that even pre-puerto rico, hurricane maria, there were already estimates that the recovery efforts for the hurricanes in florida and texas could run as high as $1 50 billion. that was before puerto rico. and now all congress has appropriated so far is about $15 billion. so it's going to cost a lot more money to repair not just puerto rico but all these areas that have been devastated by these hurricanes. >> we wish everyone in puerto rico the best, as you all struggle through this horrible situation.

our thoughts are with you. we're going to move now to washington, because as all of this unfolded in puerto rico, the president was rolling out the new republican tax plan. he calls it revolutionary, promising it will benefit the middle class. the new proposal calls for lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. for doubling the standard deduction. boosting the child tax credit. and eliminating the estate tax. there were few details in this tax plan blueprint. so we don't know how much it will cost and exactly who will benefit or how the government will make up for the trillions of dollars lost in tax revenue. that will, of course, add to the national deficit. there's a lot of confidence on the republican side this week about this plan. but are democrats like senator donnelly of indiana, who are facing tough re-elections, are they going to come along on this tax plan? >> my conversation with a lot of congressional aides, democratic, moderate, i would say aides tell

me that the democrats are not prepared to back this tax reform or this tax legislation because they don't feel as though thief been really -- they've been really engaged from the beginning. democrats want this to go through regular order, which is not what's going to happen, at least that's not what republicans want to happen. from all the conversations i've been having, democrats are not feeling like they want to do this. i looked at some surveys from bipartisan groups who said that something between 30% of people who are making somewhere between $50,000 and $150,000 would see a tax increase. that means that's essentially the heart of the middle class. about 30% of people that might see their taxes go up. that's a real problem for democrats and i would say that's a real problem for republicans. >> sue, when you think about this plan, it's just that, a plan. it isn't a bill yet. does that throw cold water on that taxes is going to be easy for the republicans to pass? >> this was a good week. the initial reaction in this

blueprint, they like it. the house freedom caucus, their allies say they like it. but this was the candy, all the good news. the actual legislation is going to have all the broccoli. let's see what that is and how it progresses. it's certainly probably going to fall apart many times before it can come together. this is a republican party in control of washington and this is a tax cut. this should be the easiest thing they are able to do. and that is why i think there is so much political momentum behind this, because -- particularly following that failure on health care, the sort of psychology of capitol hill is, man, if we can't pass a tax cut, we are in trouble. >> although, jeff, maybe the confirmation of jeff gorsuch, they need this. >> no question. every republican needs to go back to their districts and say, look we at least did this. but i think my big question is, as i sit and watch all of this, what will the president's

involvement in this be? there's not an easy answer to that. some on the hill would like him to just sort of stay out of it, because when he gets involved in the details of this, it could muck things up. but there are still big unanswered questions. the biggest thing, how will this benefit the wealthiest americans? the president has not released his tax returns yet. you'll hear many cries for that. how will it benefit the wealthiest of americans? and this is still a fight, i think. we'll see if congress is functional, even being able to do this. but sue is right. if the republican majority cannot get tax cuts through, what can they do? >> i think the biggest challenge they're going to have gets to your point. there is attention between what the president says this plan does and what it actually does. he says this is a populist plan. this is a classic republican plan. over time, as the country debates this, that difference between those two different visions is going to be very clear and make this politically

very difficult. >> the president, yamiche, seems to not even like the 20% rate for corporations. he'd rather see 15%. is he really going to sell this? >> i think in some ways, yes, he might say he wants that. but i think when you think about what his brand is going to be, and 2018 is going to be all about donald trump. i've been talking to congressional aides. donald trump is going to be on the ballot, even if his name isn't on the ballot. if he can't put together a win, he can only get away with that for so long. what is he going to say in 2020 if he says we couldn't do health care, tax cuts. what does the president have to say if he's going to stump in 2018? in some ways, this is going to be like health care. if republicans say we have the votes to pass this, i think he's going to be ready to sign it. >> what's the mood among conservatives on capitol hill? they have a child tax credit as part of this plan, w has not always been celebrated by some of the more conservative media organs because it complicates

the code, in their view. is that going to stay? >> that's a great question. i think it goes to michael's point about the promises that the president is making about the tax bill and the reality of it. one of the things i think that republicans in congress are nervous about is they do want to be able to go home and say this helps the middle class. the child tax credit is one of those things, the most obvious ways to help families. that is where we're seeing maybe the clash come in. so far it does tend to benefit wealthier americans and there's going to be a push to sort of push that benefit on the tax code. >> speaking about what makes republicans nervous, alabama voters handed another setback to president trump this week. his pick in the republican primary in alabama was defeated by judge roy moore. the controversial, ultra-conservative judge beating luther strange. many republican lawmakers in washington are concerned about moore's fire and brimstone beliefs, including his belief

that god is the only source of law. mike, no one spent more time with roy moore than you. how much of a burden will he be for republicans this fall and in 2018? >> this fall, i don't think he's going to disrupt much. i think he's got a pretty clear path to winning an election. the burden will come in one of two ways. one, he'll be used during campaigns as a way of branding the republican party, sort of like todd aiken was used years back for his comments -- unfortunate comments about rape. and second, when he gets to washington, assuming he wins, he is going to cause problems for everybody. that is his modus operandi. he wants to stand up for what he sees as the divine truth of this country. >> you don't see a chance for the democrat, doug jones, a former u.s. attorney? he's closing in on the polls. >> he'd have a great chance if it wasn't alabama. this is a state that went for donald trump more than just about any state.

and the path jones now has to walk, he can't rubb run againsty moore. he's got to run to the center as a moderate. it's going to be tough for doug jones running as a moderate to really get the base out in alabama, in a place where the math just isn't there. i'm not ruling it out. it's just going to be difficult. >> some aides said doug jones has about a 10 #% chance of winning. even democrats, as they're hoping and praying that maybe the party can put money into this race, they don't think he can win. >> 10%? [laughter] >> sue? this was not just a loss for luther strange. this was a loss for majority leader mitch mcconnell. >> yes, it was. if you are steve bannon, who helped play a role in this race, this was a road map for how to run republican primaries in 2018. and i think they see that road map as -- in the republican primary, not in the general. but that mitch mcconnell has

never really been super popular, but is now deeply unpopular with republicans. that is in some part due to president trump, who has attacked the majority leader. and they clearly -- i think we're going to see this road map play out in races like arizona, nevada. mitch mcconnell, very successfully in the last two election cycles, beat back every insurgent challenge. >> i remember reading that, the return of the establishment are we going to see bannon go into nevada? >> i think some of them. he's definitely going to go out and scout and see what's available. there are only so many roy moore. i think he is a unique figure in the sense that he has run so many times before. i do not think steve bannon will be able to find someone to replicate that. but it's trouble, no doubt about it. senator mcconnell's winning streak is now broken. and the big question is, what does the president do here?

the president, for all his dislike and distaste for president obama, he saw exactly the limits of the office, the limits of endorsement. so i'm not sure of any endorsements that president trump has on these candidates will make a difference or not. >> that's why i found this race so fascinating. the trump voter in alabama, still likes the president but they don't take direction from the president. >> that's right. the trump voter in alabama deeply loves the president. it's not just that they kind of say they support him or approve of the job he's doing. they voted for the guy he said not to vote for, in his spirit. they were doing what they thought trump really wanted, even if trump was saying something different. towards the end, trump was giving winks and nods enough to basically give them permission. >> he said i might have made a mistake. >> and then he deleted his tweet! >> before the election, he said that. >> and he allowed steve bannon, who he has a tense relationship with, to go out and say a vote for roy moore is a vote for

donald trump, and trump said nothing. trump knew that happened, day before election, trump just let it happen and never said, wait a minute, i'm actually endorsing luther strange. >> alabama is alabama. so goes alabama does not mean so goes the nation. we're not talking about nevada or -- i don't even know another state that isn't the same. i think alabama is a special case. >> special case, always love going down there as a reporter. i think this race will maybe say a lot about 2018. yamiche maybe right -- may be right. maybe it's just alabama. before we go tonight, we want to take note of a bipartisan moment, quite a moment in congress this week. majority whip steve scalise walked back onto the house floor for the first time since being shot 15 weeks ago. his colleagues, democrats and republicans alike greeted scalise with a standing ovation, hugs, and, of course, many well wishes. as minority leader nancy pelosi put it, everyone in congress and across the country is on team

scalise. welcome back, congressman! see you for a story in louisiana seen, i'm sure. our conversation now will continue online on the "washington week extra" where we'll talk about the debate over nfl players taking a knee in protest. many of our viewers shared their thoughts. we'll bring you into the discussion and talk about patriotism. you'll find it after 10:00 p.m. friday night. i'm robert costa. have a great weekend! >> funding for "washington week" is provided by... ♪[music] >> 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. >> 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.

crew: okay, turning over, please. action! julian fellowes: i enjoy writing downton abbey, and i suppose i've made my living out of writing about fictional country houses that are occupied by fictional characters. now we're to be turned out of downton. cut, thank you. julian fellowes: but britain's great houses are real, and inhabited by real people. "charlie, i have been very wicked "with lord cole, sir frederick johnstone, the prince of wales, and others." in this series, what i'm trying to find is the real lord grantham, the real lady mary. that's great. i love jewels, actually. presumably, that's not the countess. (laughing) the real bates, the real anna. my eyes absolutely fill at the thought of this. oh, look at that.