>> the mueller report, coming soon. according to the attorney general. i'm robert costa. welcome to "washington week." >> total the collusion delusion is over! >> president trump claims vindication, as the attorney general prepares to release a redacted version of the mueller report. plus, the president revives the health care debate. alarming some republicans and uniting democrats. >> the president wants to go back to repeal and replace again. make our day! >> next. ♪[music] >> this is "washington week." funding is provided by... ♪[music]

>> babble. a language program that teaches real life conversations in a new language, such as spanish, french, german, italian and more. babble's 10- to 15-minute lessons are available in an app or o. more information on babble.com. >> additional funding is provided by the yuen foundation. committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the forporation public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. ank you! once again, from washington, moderator robert costa. >> good evening. attorney general william barr says he will deliver a version ofor the mueller r to congress by mid-april, if not sooner. in aai letter, barr that the justice department is reviewing the nearly 400-page document and considering redactions such as

grand jury materials, andrmation about sources any information that could, quote, unduly infringe onhe personal privacy and reputational interests of parties. what does that mean? well, it's pretty unclear at is moment. bu barr is prepared to testifyar publicly in may. in his response to barr, house judiciary chairman wrote, congress requires the fully complete mueller report without redactions as wel as access to the underlying evidence. by april 2. inand that dea still stands. joining me tonight, peter bakere white house correspondent for the new york times. hallie jackson, chief white house correspondent for nbc news and anchor for msnbc live. yamiche alcindor, white house correspondent for the pbs newshour. and eliana johnson, white house correspondent for politico. peter, inside the west wing tonight, how are they interpreting this letter from

the attorney general? do they fee like they're in the clear legally but still have some exposure politically? >> definite political exposure, because we don't know what's in this 400-page report. all we know are two sentences, or fragments of two sentencesat bill barr quoted previously, which is he did not establish a criminal conspiracy with russia and he did not charge that the president committed a crime of obstruction, even though he's not exonerating him. we don't know anything else. obviousy the rest of t report is going to have things in it the president is not going to like. what he's trying to do before then is cement in the impression that he's completely exonerated. it's almost as if he was on law and order, and he's saying, look, they gothe wrong guy. the d.n.a. tests came back and its not me. what mueller is saying is, i don't have enough to charge crime, but we'll see what else he found. >> interesting thing t came out is that line that said, based on what the president has

said publicly, we do not expect to essentially hand over this report to seek executive privilege. that is theine that ihink has folks really looking into it, trying to figure out, what does it mean when critically attorney general barr says no plans to do this? right? is that leaving them some wiggle room for the white house to call upnd say, well, you had no plans, but guess what? we have some plans. i thinkhe that's this fight goes over the next 48 hours or so. >> yamiche, based onhat point, you talked to rudy giuliani, the president's lawyer often. and you know emmets inside the white hou, thinking about those questions. is the white house prepared to start raising questions aboute? privil >> i think the political exposure is a real big issue here. i think thatsi the pnt today said that he has confidence in attorney general william barr and that he has nothing to hque, e, quote, as the president's specific words. so in some ways, the president, at least publicly, is saying do whatever you need to. ilelready feeled. i think the fact that william

barr had that letter, now last weekend, that said i and the deputy attorney general looked at this evidence and said we don't think the president obstructed justice, i think william barr is in some ways giving the president cover, has given him something to feel good about, because he'seally coming out and saying the president should be all career on this. i gn-- all clear o this. i go back to james comey and that press conference h did about hillary clinton's e-mails, saying she's car criminally but not negligently. now that we know it's over 400 pages, robert mueller could say you should not return phone calls of ruvlian president imir putin if they offer -- russian officials if theyrt offr onmp your gn, as some did. >> he's also trying to protect his own reputation. inside ts lettee's saying, my summary, well, i wouldn't use summaryd, i would use the phrase principle conclusions. he's saying this talk ofim

summarizing everything is not entirely accurate. >> i think there are a couple of things people have to remember about barr. the most importants one that he didn't want this job as attorney general. he was really pressed to take it. he did i out of a sense of duty, not duty to president donald trump but duty to his country. so the trump administration came to him and i think he doesn't particularly care about getting on the wrong side of donald trump, as say his predecessor, attorney general jeff ses did. but barr, i think, probably does care about his reputation in the shington legal community the one thing in today's letter that i thought was interesting l is bard out the kinds of information he's going to be redacting from the report. democrats are sure to seize on those redactions. one of them was informati that could cause reputational harm to somebody. i'll be curious if -- so reputational harm to somebody not charged with a crime. we know trump isn't going to be charged with a crime. so will there be information redacted that may have caused reputational harm to the president, w who behaved

improperly but may not have behaved criminally? >> let's go aier the d. in that letter, barr laid out a time line for the release of the report and he explained, although the president would have the right to exert privilege over certain parts o f thort, there are no plans to submit the report to the white house for a privileged that comes to your point. maybe the attorney general is going to operate beyond the white house here. he's not going to check the box with the president. >> i almost see h it as throwing the ball in the white house's court to a degree, saying, hey, haveo plans to submit this to you, to whatever degree it's going to be redacted orot, in may a few weeks here, mid-april. democrats on capitol hill areh not happy what at all. they want to see attorney general bill barr -- he, by the way, says i'll sit down and testify in front of the senat judiciary committee. muse judiciary. what about roberller? i spoke with several members of congress on the democratic se who say, yeah, the threat of

subpoena is entirely possible, because they want to hear from mueller. >> you reported that the lasting legacy of this mueller puobe could be,, that the president has successfully thrown out unwritten rules that had bound other chief executives and that the president had effectively eidanded prtial power in a dramatic way. thisen before we've seen full report, you're concluding as a reporter that it's prettyt significant w the attorney general has done? >> well, if the conclusion is that the president did not obstruct justicer least -- even exonerate him, as robert muler said inhat barr letter, to conclude that there was nbsuction of justice, then we know the next president can get away with firing an f.b.i. director, can fire his attorney general, withxpcit motivation of this investigation in mind. it's setting a precedent. and after watergate, we sort of established certain understandings of things, that we were not g ing toerfere with the law enforcement system

when it was investigating the president. we set up a l that now expired. but now i think, if this is thec e of this, if at the end of the day there is no politicao consequenc legal consequence for a president's actions, then the next oo is going say, i can do the next thing. >> and there's political fallout everywhere. adam shift summed up the view of many democrats, who say the trainintrump campaignid step ouf bounds. >> you might think it's ok that the pre himself called on russia to hack his oonent's e-mails, that the russians attempted to hack a server affiliated with that campaign. i don't think that's ok. >> leader mccarthy, he called on shift to resign. >> all should be concerned with the chairman of the house intelligence commission taking the position of judge and jury. he needs to resign from the

committee. >> why i chairman shift continuing to plow forward on the russia questions? >> i think democrats believe that having put forward the view that trump kol clued with the russian -- colluded with the russians and was there an illegitimately elected president is afu u argument for them. but you see the president really, in a campaign rally in michigan last night, turningn that around o them and really using it as a political brickbat. i think you'reoing to hear more and more democrats try to get shift to pull back from thal a l bit, because of what's laid out in the report. you have to remember that robert mueller was put forward -- you had people buying votives with hismage on it, putting him forward as the paradigm ofpr riety. given that he's concluded that this campaign didn't collude with russia, i think the president, wielding that conclusion, over the head -- beating hispponents over the head with it. >> what is speaker pelosi's

strategy as she deals with this democratic feelings about how the attorney general handling everything? >> i think speaker pelosi is dealing withaus and frankly a base that had a collective gasp when they heardt of rob mueller's findings or at least the summary or the principal collusions as -- conclusions as attorney general barr wants to call it, because i think there we a loft of people who -- a lot of people who saw what trump was doing a saying, is this possible that you could do all of these things without tm being criminal? is it ok for candidates to be talking to russia? is it ok for a preside to dictate a statement and say, it came from my son, and around and say, actually, no, that's not what happened. the meeting wasn't about adoption. it was actually about getting rt on hillary clinton. i think there's a lot of behavior that the democrats saw andooereng at and saying, there has to be something wrong with some of this. now speaker pelosi is in some ways having toheerd her caulcaucus away from that idea,t

it's a fine line, because there are a lot of people who are still mad. >> i do think it's worth noting rkt part of where speakerelosi and others are coming from, they're looking at what people are talutng a human beings who don't live inside the beltway bubble. it's not russi it's not some of these issues that democrats are getting question about when they're out at these town halls,otalking withs. i think the speaker may be keying in on that. there is a lot of discussion out this idea of, what did the president do, and questions that are very serious about his judgment and his behavior and ho that reflects on the office, there is, i think, a desire to get so some of the issues like health care as you point out. >> on that point, peter, whehi you about the obstruction front here, we may learn a lot in this report about theon president'sct, things that have not been reported. but we won't necessarilynow his intent. was it corrupt intent? because he never sat for an interview with robert mueller. if you're a democratic leader, knowing it's hard tot prove t

intent, do you still pursue an obstructio case on t impeachment front? >> well, there's intent. that's one issue. thotherssue is, bill barr raised in his letter, if there's no underlying crime, you can't be charged with obstruction of justice. if you don't haveomething to obstruct -- it has happened in a case that didn't have an underlyi crime. arguably president clinton was impeached for obstruction ofe, justor lying about something that wasn't an understoounderlying crime. but hallie's point is right. the air is out of the balloon here. nancy pelosi knows there are not 20 republicans in the senate who are likely or even conceivablecu at this parr moment to vote for a conviction. if you're not gonna have a conviction, whants the p of going down that road? it could backlash. ld president trump do with that? he would take, even if the house did vote to impeach him, he would take exoneration from the senate and say, i win, see? innocent. >> exactly. >> and i think pelosi can seeha

where train is headed and she doesn't want to put her foot on the gas. he this brings up why mocrats this week, and the republicans, are turning to health care. let's turn to thaurselves, because president trump surprised his own party this week when he announced that the justice department would once again try toow strike president obama's health care law. the president insisted the move uld help peopleut many republicans were unhappy with the decision. >> a remember this,ecause it's very important. and i'm speaking now for the republican party. we will always protect patients with preexisting conditions. always. always. [cheering] >> i'm very disappointed andly veheme opposed to the administration seeking to invalidate the entire affordable care act. >> eliana, we have in your some reallyis week, good insights into why the administration choose to go in this direction, to suddenlea tun

toh care. acting chief of staff mick mulvaneyrv a conive hard liner, now at the president's side. why was he encouraging the president to do this? >> acting chief of staff mulvaney, he was a founder of the tea party caucus in congress when he was a member of congrars from southina. he's been able to bring in some allies and mulvaney, along with those allies, joe groagen and others, they told the predent, youade a campaign promise to repeal obamacare and you hav o not deliver it. you've got two years. you should fulfill that campaign promise. the problem is that republicans don't have a plan with which replace obamacare. and so those in the administration, including attorney general b barr and health and human services secretary, white house counsel, they were pressing the president not to do this, because they said you can push to repeal obamacare, but you've been here, been there, done that, back in 2017, first year of theon

administra where republicans simply could not unify behind an alternative health care plan and the really landedv with a thud on capitol hill. >> you heard the president say in that clip that he wants to protect people with preexisting conditions. ok. w? that's the question. there is an acknowledgment from the sources i talk to, they don't have an answer to that question. >> then why are they doing this? >> because the president sees it as aolitical winner, despite the fact that democrats proved, for them, it was more politically advantageous in the midterms. to eliana's point, we also understand that vice president pence had questions about not the actual policy, which he supports, but about the political a ramifications exactly what you're talking about with these republicans coming out and going, what arese we supto do? we're now backed in a corner rd.h no way for it's very telling that the president himself said to republicans on capitol hill, come up wn.h a p i'd like you guys to come up with a plan. you know, that is not usually how it w it's usually domestic policy aidsnside the white hou to

come up with a plan and then get republicans on capitol hill on board with the plan that they've written. >> and democrats on the campaign trail for 2020, they want to talk about kitchen table issues. they're not talking about the russia probe. >> this is -- republicans are in such a bad political position on heal care. precisely because of the president. today or this week, hallie and i were on the lawn, screaming questions at the president. >> i'm sure you weren't screaming. >> shouting questions at the president. >> you wereming because of the helicopters. >> all the context that we mean. and the one word i could come up with was time line. what is your time coming up with a plan? the president says, once we get to the supreme court a this lawsuit is dealt with, we'll come up with a plan. if you're talking tome suburban who are very much what republicans need to win in 2020, they're a lot of women looking around saying, ok,t but w does that actually mean? if you take away my health care today, what am io goinge left with? all the sourcing that i've been doing, the white house i even trying to act like they have a plan. they do not have a plan. w

t's surprising about him doing this, of course, is that this has otherwise been the best week of his presidency. right? you know, he's been cleared, in his way of putting it, on the mueller report. we'll see whatt actually says. but for the moment, it is true that he doesn't face atin alle of criminal conspiracy with russia. that's an important moment for him. why shen change theject to a strength of your opponents? why change it to sometng that they themselves would like to change the subject to? mystery >> and it was a mystery to leader mcconnell in the senate, to minority leader mccarthy, who reportedly privately urged the president to not pursue this initiative. >> i to t had it's our understanding there was a deadline. ething had to be done. but this was the moment that acting chief of staff mulvaney and others decided to pitch, in the words of one person, pitch the president on this idea and try to get him to do it. to peter's, poi remember sunday and monday, which feels like 100 y ago, the attorney general's letter came out, his

chief antagonist ended up charged criminally. he had one of his closest allies, benjamin netanyahu, over to the white house to spend time with him. he was riding higem whilerats may have gasped about the mller report -- >> they asked, my colleague asked, why are you doing this? he said too much positive news.e ad to change the subject. >> i keep coming back, eliana, to your reporting and the question of, why? and when you look at someone like mick mulvaney, a rushed vote, a name most americans don't know but he runs the office of manag as the acting director, even though president trump says he's aopulist, an everyman, a businessman, inside of this administration,o many conservative ideologues. >> yeah. and mulvaney is case in point of th. really an ideological conservative and the first ideological conservative to be chief of staff.

john kelly was a military man. reince priebus was really an established politicalperative. but this is really the first window into how mulvaney is h wieldi power. john kelly really tried to restrict access to the obviously office. mulvaney came in and said, i'm not going to do that. but what he has done is brought in a lot of ideological -- he's given those people who he's brought in access to the president and those werepehe le who carried the day in these arguments about whether to pursue this path on obamacare. >> if that's the case, does this make divided government, deals between speaker pelosi and president trump on prescription drugs, on infrastructure, harder if conservatives are driving the agenda inside? >> i think it' i think it's already going to be hard, because from the very beginning, when the president alized he was going to be faced with a house that was controlled by nancy pelosi, she said -- he said if you investigate me, i'm t goingo already have issues with you and

not want to legislate with you, so i don't know if looking forward, people are saying that a lot of things are going to geg done to with. but i go back to president trump's personality. inauguration, o of his first crisis, one of the first issues he had was him comparing his inauguration crowds with president obama. everyone thought, you just got inaugurated president ofs.he united sta why are you picking this fight? i think he likes the idealyf re repealing and talking about a program passed by president obama. >> speaking respectfully engaging with the president outside of thehite house, n screaming -- [laughter] >> there was a telling exchange you had with other reporters with the president this week at underscores this conservative drift that we're paying attention to as reporters. education secretary devos learned a hard lesson wn she proposed cutting funding for the special olympics. she faced tough questions to zero out federal funds forlyhe specialics. then on thursday, the president

turned the tables on her. >> i just authorized funding of the special olympics. i've been to the special olympics. i think it's incredible. and i just authorized a funding. i heard about it this morng. i have overridden my people wit funding the special olympics. >> not just majority leader,nn mcl, a minority leader, mccarthy, who seemed to be a little uneasy withhi this to the right. even president trump has reservations. >> when the president say i'm going t authorize funding, he does not do the authorizations for the budget. congress does. they had already said, we're not cutting the special olympics. the program was never really at risk. h,hers in the organization i had conversations whey said, the administration has weight. what president trump sets forward as his priorities have weight with people around the country. for them to have changed their mind, they felt like this significance.ic i was frankly very surprised to

hear that response to my question to the president. he does not reverse course often. it seemed p like theitical pressure had built enough. and now one of my big questions is, wst does t mean for secretary devos's future? she had become the face of this controversy very much. she came out -- and i spoke with her folks right after this moment happened. they said, well, she's been fighting behind the scenes on this for yearsre yet the she was, publicly defending her boss's budget. problem. if you're working for president trump, this is a position you're likely to be caught in. u're defending the policy that you have been handed. this is probably thek m mulvaney crowds creating a budget that president trump has probably not read in anyai d and it includes a lot of conservative lists, letea go and get rid of this funding, that funding. but it will never actually happen because congress won't go along with it. it's been in the budget for years now. nobody paid attention to it until suddenly it got a little bit of attention fm an

entertainment reporter and bet devos was left to defend somethingte really did have much to do with. >> and she was out there by herself, saying, you know what? we like this program, understanr this p, but at the end of the day, this can be done throughic philanthr endeavors. when devos got that job, people were very worried with the idea that she was going to have the private sector starting to fund all sorts of things that the federal government usually takes the lead on. but i think that this is -- as hallie said, i think now maybe we're a little bit on devos watch, in that the president let her kind of be the face of this. then when he felt like it was advantageous to him, he reversed course. but i don't know what that means for betsy devos. >> it's what mark said, who was involved in that first fire exchange. he said, has anybody checked on betsy devos to see that she's bill under the that the president just threw her under? >> the president does not le when his cabinet officials

attrac negative p.r. he's somebody who doesn't follow the detail day-to-day operations of his cabinet agencies but he does pay attenon when cabinet secretaries appear in hearings on capitol hill that are televised. he certainly was aware of those uncomfortabl exchanges that devos had on capitol hill this week and was notti plarly pleased with them. >> thanks, everybody, for another good conversation. our conversation will continue as ever on the "washington week" extra, available on our website, facebook or youtube, every friday after 8:30 p.m. while you're there, take our election 2020 survey on the home page. !'m robert costa. have a great weeke ♪[music]

>> corporate funding is provided by... ♪[music] >> babble. a language program that teaches real life conversations in a new language, such as spanish, french, german, italian d more. babble's 10- to 15-minute lessons are available as an p or online. more information on babble.com. >> additional funding is provided by the yuen foundation. committed toin bri 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. mu

>> from thum of the city of new york's david berg distinguished speakers series... >> for women of my generation, getting the first job was the big hurdle. >> ...supreme court justicead ruth ginsburg joins npr correspondent nina totenberg in conversation. >> can this institution real stay away from the political fray? >> for one thing, were by far the most collegial institute in town. we all respect and even genuinely like each other. >> this program was made possible by viewers like you. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> okay.er ne please be seated. >> so, i'm going to start out

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