good morning. i'm thomas roberts at msnbc world headquarters in new york. 9:00 a.m. out east, 6:00 a.m. in the west. in about an hour from now, vice president mike pence sits down with representatives in kentuckied a part of the latest

push for the health care plan. it's home to senator rand paul, one of the opponents of the health care measure. here's president trump in his morning weekly address. >> through seven long years of botched roll-ins, soaring costs, canceled plans, and bureaucratic mandates, americans have called out for relief. and relief is what we are determined to give them. if we do nothing, millions more innocent americans will be hurt and badly hurt. >> so fallout this morning over the justice department's sudden firing of the 46 remaining u.s. attorneys hired by previous administrations. it happened yesterday afternoon when the acting deputy attorney general called the federal prosecutors asking for immediate resignations. a source tells nbc that one of the u.s. attorneys initially found out he was losing his job through media reports. one of the president's key supporters in congress is taking his wiretapping claims a sfep further. here's what steve king told my

colleagues yesterday. >> what we do suspect strongly is that general flynn was wiretapped. we believe that president trump was wire trapped in his conversation -- or, excuse me, wiretapped in his conversation with the president of mexico, wiretapped again in his conversation with the prime minister of australia. and we've got the fairly definitive stories about the fisa warrants being requested. those things seem to be factual, but we actually don't have any facts to work with on this. >> neither the president nor the white house have provided proof of wiretapping. trey dowdy, one of the members of the house intel committee this morning, on what to expect from its wide ranging investigation. >> i would encourage all of your viewers -- we're going to start the evidentiary process on march 20th. so have an open mind on all facets of this from the interference to the influence to our american response to it but also the leaks. >> want to go to the white house. kelly o'donnell is standing by.

what's the white house doing to help as we have watched in the last hour vice president mike pence leave for kentucky and the goal of getting this health care bill off the ground? >> reporter: he's departed washington for what you could call a public engagement over the health care law. the white house isn't saying this visit is exclusively about the health care law, but kentucky's governor issued a statement before this visit today saying he was encouraged by potential the white house has suggested for some changes to the republican version of this health care overhaul. changes are something that paul ryan is very concerned about because of some of the strict requirements in trying to pass this legislation with democrats not being supportive. pen mike pence on the road today. the president has no public events but he, too, has been having these personal meetings with lawmakers trying to persuade them. of course it comes at a time when we see the white house

still has some controversies to deal with but eve an bit of good news. the president is flexing his boardroom skills to pitch an obamacare overhaul. >> this is the time we're going to get it done. we're working together. we have some great results. >> reporter: hampered by resistance from some conservatives, vice president pence has been making his own rounds. >> we move beyond the failed policies of obamacare. >> reporter: to different groups to push the republicans' health insurance plan. >> we're going to have an orderly transition to a better health care system. >> reporter: from health care to jobs. remember this campaign bravado? >> i am going to be the greatest jobs president that god ever created. remember that. >> reporter: back then, he discredited government job figures. >> don't believe those phony numbers. when you hear 4.9%, 5%

unemployment. >> reporter: but suddenly friday those same labor department statistics had newfound credibility when president trump's first month in office showed a trop in unemployment. specht sean spicer revelled in the contradiction. >> i talked to the president prior to this and he said to quote him very clearly, they may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now. >> reporter: a dose of good humor sorely needed in the trump white house after new disclosures about ousted national security adviser michael flynn. last fall, flynn worked several months for a foreign-owned turkish company. his consulting firm paid more than $500,000. the press secretary acknowledged flynn had provided some information to the trump transition team. >> al personal lawyer of general flynn's contacted a transition lawyer and asked for guidance on what he should or should not do. >> reporter: but the white house insisted it had not known flynn's consulting client was helping the turkish government. spicer said the retired general

submitted documentation for his outside work but did not register as a foreign agent until this past week. >> you wouldn't know that until he filed-e didn't file until two days ago so therefore nobody would have known that because he hadn't filed as a foreign agent until two days ago. >> reporter: once during the transition and then again with a white house counsel's office. they say flynn through his attorney was asking how he needed to deal with this issue of his outside business and was told by the transition and later again by the counsel's office, according to the white house, that this was a personal business matter and he had to follow the law but they could not give him specific legal advice. so that raises the question, thomas, what did they actually know, had they been given some sort of a heads up about his outside work and at the same time the white house says that

the president and vice president were not aware of this turkish connection. >> kelly, great to see you. thank you. new developments in the controversy over president trump's wiretapping claims. we have the ranking member of the house intel committee, adam schiff, telling politico he believes the claims will be debunked on march 20th in an open hearing. that statement coming amid continued calls for the release of evidence to support the claims. here's a portion of peter alexander's report last night on "nbc nightly news." >> nearly a full week after his explosive accusations that president obama tapped his phones, president trump still ignoring calls to no provid any proof. >> mr. president -- >> the house intelligence committee, republicans and democrats asking the department of justice and fbi if they have any evidence to back up the president's claim. >> we're going to put to rest this bogus claim from the president that he was illegally wiretapped by his predecessor. >> reporter: it comes as the

entire senate intelligence committee has been granted access to the most sensitive materials from the investigation into russian interference in the election. an unprecedented move. >> we have peter alexander reporting, givings aing us an u the moment where the reporting stand right now. i want to get into the details of this with a member of the house intelligence committee and the house judiciary committee. good to have you with me. we heard your colleague say it's a bogus claim that president obama wiretapped trump tower, that we do not have any evidence from the department of justice. is there any evidence that you've seen of wiretapping for trump tower or his campaign? >> good morning, thomas. thanks for having me back. zero evidence. and these are just smoke bombs that the president and steve king and others are trying to put into an investigation where the dots continue to connect. and what they are showing are very deep personal, political, and business ties between donald trump and people on his team and

russia. >> when you say smoke bomb, kai kaye i don't say usually creates that type of smoke and for others it creates opportunity. there's new information from one of your colleague, congressman steve king, who is now adding on to certain claims about wiretapping and eaches dropping. take a listen to this. >> what we do suspect strongly is that general flynn was wiretapped. we believe that president trump was wire trapped in his conversation -- or excuse me, wiretapped in his conversation with the president of mexico, wiretapped fen in his conversation with the prime minister of staaustralia. and we have the fairly definitive stories about the fisa warrants being requested. those things seem to be factual, but we ak humly don't have any facts to work with on this. >> we know that the white house was very upset for the calls between the president and

mexico's president pena nieto and also the prime minister from australia, turnbull. the fact that those calls went sideways and it became public knowledge, the white house said they would get to the bottom of those leaks. what can you clear up beyond innuendo? because right now there are smoke bombs coming from the right about this, but also from the left that want to point a finger that, you know, hasn't, you know, just out of pure defense, you haven't proven the point yet of what you're trying to say either. >> thomas, when i hear comments like "we believe" or "we suspect," to me that means we have no evidence. we're just kind of winging it. you raise a fair question because right now we have only found deep political, personal, and financial ties, and the question that americans have is do these ties extend to working with the rugs as they were attacking us. isle pull out one piece of evidence we certainly want to investigate more in the house intelligence committee. june 2016 it's revealed that

russia is indeed attacking us through this interference campaign. one month later, carter page, who president trump cites as a foreign policy senior adviser on the campaign, gets permission from the campaign and travels over to moscow. now, it's very interesting that a senior adviser to the trump team would visit moscow at a time it's known across our country that russia is attacking us. >> you've also launched a website and a specific page, and i think people that have looked at ancestry.com might get confused by this because it's the links. you give all these different links of the people within trump and his team and the potential connections to whether it's the ambassador to the u.s. sergey kisly kislyak, or vladimir putin, russian business interests, and certain people within the trump orbit that have had contact -- >> haven't proven they're all related yet, thomas. we're just working on the personal, political, and business ties. it's a living, working website because as we see, it's updated

as far as info on this every day. it's being revealed just as we speak that roger stone, another adviser to the trump campaign, had extensive dealings with the hacking team that was releasing documents during the campaign to embarrass hillary clinton's team. so we are encouraging people to go through the website, understand why russia is not our friend, understand the ties between trump and russia, understand how positions have changed within the trump team since meeting with russia, and then of course understand the evidence behind the interference campaign. we tell people what you can do about it is ask people to support -- ask members of congress to support the protect our democracy act which calls for an independent commission. >> a lot of people would say, well, what the heck was everybody doing in 2016 when this was going on and why weren't proper alarm bells going off then if certain democrats are to be believed today? we have the fbi director james comey, he held a closed-door briefing on thursday with the gang of eight, the top

democratic and republican lawmakers from the house and senate there. have you been hearing any information that came out -- that's come out of that meeting from your colleagues? >> what i know is on march 20th, director comey is going to testify before the house intelligence committee in our russia investigation. one of the first questions i know members of our side will be asking is what you brought up at the top of the hour -- was president trump wiretapped? >> now it's a ridiculous question because we might as well ask him about roswell and who was the real o.j. killer but it is important for the american people to put this to bed once and for all and we expect director comey will say no, that is a destructive claim, that did not happen, and hopefully he'll shed more light on the investigation into any u.s. persons who had prior tie if that did exist with russia while they were attacking us. >> do you think that the testimony just from james comey alone is going to be enough to reveal, you know, what's -- we have congressman adam schiff saying he was the former british

spy, christopher steele, the author of an unverified dossier about the president to testify as well. this is someone that the fbi was going to pay for his work. they ultimately ended up not paying him for this work. >> yeah. this will not be the first and last hearing on this. we expect many hearings and we'd like many witnesses, including christopher steele, who wrote the dossier. what's interesting about the toss yay is that we have not seen at least in open reporting that dossier discredited, but we have also not seen many parts of it validated. so he would be a very key witness as would carter page, roger stone, members of trump's security team, who traveled with the candidate or donald trump in 2013 when he was in moscow for the miss universe competition. these are all people who i think would be interesting to talk to and shed more light on the personal, political, and financial ties that existed with russia. >> what makes you think they're going to tell the truth, though? we've seen from certain people

within this atmosphere of donald trump whether it's jeff sessions not remembering having, you know, time with the russian ambassador, the u.s. one, sergey kislyak, or the fact that there are certain members of the team, whether it's mike flynn, who was not transparent about being a foreign agent, being paid by turkey during his time advising the president prior to his election. what makes you think that you can really get the truth out of certain people you'd like to have go under oath? >> thomas, when i was a prosecutor, i would tell juries that we actually sometimes learned just as much when we prove that somebody is not telling the truth. when we saw that mike flynn had lied to the vice president and jeff sessions had lied twice under oath about prior contacts, that's a consciousness of guilt. they were asked about important dealings with russia and both of them denied it and then later it was revealed. that actually shows that they were attempting to cover up their prior contacts. and that i think kind of is

another stream that leads to this wider body of water, a lot of the questions around personal, political, financial ties with russia. again, as you pointed out, right now there are a lot of dots that are connecting and what the american people want to know is were any of these individuals working with russia as they attacked us. that investigation begins on march 20th. >> all right. simplest explanation is usually the correct one. >> that's right. >> we'll wait for march 20th. congressman eric swalwell, great to have you on. millions across the u.s. are bundling up after a big swing in the temperatures. they're going from hot to cold. we've got record highs and winter storms overnight. joining me, msnbc meteorologist bonnie schneider. bonnie, explain what we're seeing and when there's any good news in sight for next week. >> march 20th for spring, but that's not next week. we have to get through the rest of winter. bitterly cold, thomas. we have negative numbers for our current windchill right now. it feels like it's negative 15

in boston. you're getting ready not only for cold weather but snow. we'll be watching for highs today that will be cold across the great lakes and the northeast, but two areas to keep an eye on for the weekend for potential nasty weather and snow. storms in alabama wapd watch out for snow in the western piedmont of south carolina. really cold temperatures as well across much of the south central appalachians. as we look towards minneapolis, we could see snow impact your monday morning commute, but overall this isn't going to be too bad. a bigger storm is emerging as we go through monday through wednesday, especially tuesday. and this could be a big nor'easter as low pressure develops and bombs out off the coast. we're likely to see rain, wind, snow, the whole thing, and even heavy amounts of snow for interior new england, possibly along the i-95 corridor, also looking at the coastal threat for flooding and gusty winds. going to be big news for monday and tuesday, a monumental storm

headed our way. >> all right. don't put away the snow boots just yet. bonnie, thanks so much. appreciate it. coming up, we have the accusations of duck and cover. why are there questions over next week's asia trip for the secretary of state rex tillerson? especially since he's leaving the media behind? various: (shouting) heigh! ho! ( ♪ ) it's off to work we go! woman: on the gulf coast, new exxonmobil projects are expected to create over 45,000 jobs. and each job created by the energy industry supports two others in the community. altogether, the industry supports over 9 million jobs nationwide. these are jobs that natural gas is helping make happen, all while reducing america's emissions. energy lives here.

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from "the new york times." let's dive right in with gop health care bill. we have certain high-profile republicans saying it won't pass in the senate. i just want to play what senator tom cotton had to say this week. take a listen to this. >> senator mcconnell and every other senator is well aware of where i stand and frankly where many republican senators stand who are troubled by the breakneck pace at which the house is operating and the fact this bill as written today simply would not pass the senate because it would not reduce prices for insurance and make care affordable and personalized. >> mike, some people would say it's happening so quickly and the fact that the cbo hasn't properly scored it, it's meant to just be a bunch of busy work that would be doa in the senate. what are you hearing? >> they certainly want this thing to pass. i don't think they're trying to come up with a bill that's not going to make it to trump's desk. this was one of his central campaign promises. he doesn't want to go to microphones and say we failed. so, no, i think ryan is trying to craft a bill that can pass. the problem is they're learning

quickly how difficult it is to do health care reform. i mean, remember, obamacare took over a year to do. they a had dozens of hearings, hundreds of amendments, it's a tedious, tedious process, all these special interests, the dock tors want something, the nurses want something, the medical devices want something, republicans want something, the retirees want something. the special interest groups are everywhere and this is one of those rare issues that affects literally every person in the country. you know, all of us are going to get sick at some point and need medical care. so it's personal, it's political, the republicans are learning how difficult it is to pass this thing. and you mentioned it might not pass the senate. it might not pass the house. there's still conservatives who are up in arms over this thing saying this is just obamacare-lite. there are centrists worried about rolling back the medicaid expansion. it's fascinating to watch for all these reasons. but ryan and the republicans are struggling. >> speaker ryan certainly is a

person who was on the ticket in 2012 running against obamacare, something that mitt romney and the heritage foundation were able to institute in massachusetts for the state of massachusetts. mitt romney kind of the godfather of this. yamiche, you would think that speaker ryan for repeal and replace would have four or five different strategies ready to roll out. what are the sticking points? >> they don't want obamacare-lite. they want something that fundamentally does not expand a lot of the insurance that was expanded under the affordable care act. now, this plan right now, it would some say cover less people and really -- it's kind of changed the burden onto the people that are going to be buy the insurance. i'll say the house freedom caucus, they're thinking about the deficit and how much this is going to cost.

until the cbo comes out and says this is going to save us money and look and say, you know, this is going to transfer costs away from states that didn't take the medication expansion and you're not going to have to pay for the states that did, that's a big sticking point that a lot of republicans won't get behind. >> mike, when we think about one narrative taking place, we know there's going to be the public hearing coming up on the 20th, wiretapping, we have the ranking democrat on the intel committee, adam schiff, saying he expects president trump's claim to be debunked. this is when that intel hear willing take place. but is that true? and will we learn that directly from fbi director comey? >> well, we certainly don't know. the thing about the march 20th hearing is these people have been invited but nobody's actually committed. yesterday the fbi said they think that comey will show up, but they could change their mind at any minute. we don't know who's going to be there. is clapper going to be there,

brennan, sally yates has been invited. would she show up? she was fired by trump from the doj. who will be there? is the entirety of the testimony going to be public? will some be behind closed doors? we have yet question just don't know the answer to all of these things. comey of course has been very secretive about this, won't even tell congress that he's conducting an investigation let alope what what the substance of it may be. so, you know, he's frustrated democrats with that. schiff seems to think he hasn't seen any evidence even based on the confidential meetings. but, you know, we're all in wait-and-see mode and all eyes on march 20th for sure. >> also adding another i guess new layer to all of this, yamiche, is the fact we heard from congressman steve king not talking about any wiretapping going on at trump tower but alleging that president trump's conversations with the

presidents of mexico and australia, that that information and how sideways those calls went was leaked to the press. he were saying they were bugged as well. muddying the waters. nothing to do with the alleged wiretapping of trump tower, he's saying he's being spied on within the oesm office. >> i think what we're hearing is in some ways going to be answer a lot of questions in that there's been this accusation that donald trump is sticking by this idea that he thinks president obama somehow wiretapped him. but at least from everyone including his aides they're really doing back flips to not completely disregard the president's claims. this idea is that you have sean spicer saying yes, he sticks by that statement, but they have yet to provide any sort of evidence. and this hearing, whether or not anyone even wants to answer that question, if they do answer that question, if you have james comey sitting there saying actually no, that's completely false, there's no evidence to that, that opens him up to

criticism because he's going to be directly contradicting what the president said. now, of course this other idea of bugging and whether or not ste stephen king was bugged, that's another issue of what will come in this hearing or another time. i think what turns out to be is this environment of people feeling as though at least some people are trapping in conspiracy theories which doesn't make the administration look good and which really frankly with all the things that are going on with immigration, with health care, they really want to be pointing to some of the things they are doing well and kind of talking about bugging and talking about these controversies does not help him. >> do away with the innuendo. mike, yamiche, thanks for joining us. vice president mike pence hitting the road trying to sell the republicans' health care plan. he takes off to kentucky landing shortly. how much of a hard sell is it going to be after all of those angry town hall meetings we've seen?

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good morning. i'm thomas roberts at msnbc world headquarters in new york. at 31 past the hour, this is what we're looking at for you. in roughly an hour vice president mike pence will arrive in louisville, kentucky, where he's expected to speak and he's there the draw up support for president trump's plans to repeal and replace president obama's signature health care law. nbc's mariana atencio is live for us in louisville. tell us about this event and the fol folks who have come out to hear from the vice president. >> reporter: so good morning from louisville, thomas. as you said, vice president mike pence expected to speak here soon. he'll be joined by the new republican governor, matt bebin, speaking before a small group of local business leaders about health care and the economy. no doubt the vice president will be sealing those good jobs report numbers that came out yesterday, but he is mainly here to sell one thing -- their health care program to replace obamacare. in kentucky president trump

hoping to win over folks to the program, many of whom voted for him. he won kentucky by 63% of the vote, but who also voted for senator rand paul. rand paul has said obamacare needs to go, but he's also been very critical of the replacement program, saying it doesn't go far enough. and kentucky, thomas, if obamacare is repealed, will be one of the most affected states. here almost half a million kentuckians are currently covered under obamacare because of medicare expansion. a lot of people got covered. that's why we're also expecting some protests outside organized by local civil rights as well as social justice groups and their message to the vice president today, they want affordable health care for everyone. thomas? >> i remember covering kentucky's connect system being one of the more successfully state-run systems for people to get their insurance. great to see you. we will be talking later today as the vice president arrives in louisville. thank you. the words deep state. what does it mean to you and why is it coming up at white house press briefings? we'll talk about that. first, making sense of

health care in america. what happens if americans won't be allowed to buy insurance across state lines? i'm going to ask steven brill, who wrote the book on the current health care law. prince but once a week i let her play sheriff so i can wash it. i use tide to get out those week old stains and downy to get it fresh and soft. you are free to go. tide and downy together.

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coming up in about 30 minutes from now, vice president mike pence will be holding a listening session with business leaders in kentucky about health care. this is from last hour as we saw the vice president at andrews air force base getting ready for his flight to louisville. meanwhile, the president tweeting this morning from the official potus account, encouraging his followers to read the health care bill. joining me now, steven brill, an msnbc analyst, who wrote the book on health care called "america's bitter pill." great to have you here. before we get to the republicans' proposal, ep us make sense of the current state of health care in america. what is it? >> the current state of health care is we are the only country in the world that has tried an experiment that no one else has tried, which is let's make

believe health care is a regular consumer product where people understand what they're buying, they know what the prices are going to be, and they operate in a free market. as a result, we spend 50% to 150% more per capita on health care than anywhere in the world and our results, life expectancy, things like that, are not as good. the debate now president obama decided that he was able to get through congress a bill that helped people buy health insurance, basically the government subsidized people who couldn't afford health insurance to buy it. the republicans are now debating with the very conservatives in the house who run in gerrymandered districts and don't have to worry about anything, they basically want the government completely out of health care, and the rest of the republicans are worried that if they pull back, the government's support that a lot of their constituents, guess what,

they're not going to have access to health insurance and they're going to get kicked off the rolls. that's what this debate is about. but the context is we are the only country in the world that doesn't do anything to control the price of drugs. we're the only country in the world where hospital executives at supposedly nonprofit hospitals make $2 million to $8 million a year. we're the only country in the world where everybody makes a ton of money if they're in health care except for the nurses and the doctors. >> yeah, i was going to say, big business for some and not for all. the one feature of what americans have had access to through the ac sashgs the fact that pre-existing conditions don't matter. a lot of folks have always had issues because of insurance hiccups because of a pre-existing condition, and many americans are in fear of kind of falling back into that -- >> as well they should. >> president trump is saying that he wants to have everyone

with the ability in a free market to be able to cross state lines, open this up to make it more competitive. is he putting out a red herring on that? >> you just heard me laugh. there isn't any conference of health care experts, people in the health care business, who don't laugh when they hear that. you've heard of aetna. you've heard of cigna. guess what? they sell health insurance in many states. the issue is they have to comply with state regulationses, a total red herring, completely bogus. it would do absolutely nothing. and in fact it's been allowed in many states that you can buy across state lines. it's ridiculous. if you want to sell insurance in delaware and you're an insurance company, you have to make a deal with the hospitals and doctors of delaware to be included in that insurance. if you don't do that, what good does it do me to have my health insurance if i live in delaware? >> and for the gop members of the house who are saying, well,

obamacare's collapsing under its own weight and also there are certain insurers that are pulling out, what do you say to that? >> well, it's not collapsing. it is having all kinds of problems particularly because the opponents of obamacare stepped in to undermine some of the support that the health insurance companies had. but obamacare was not the perfect solution. obamacare solved half of the problem, which is it gave people the ability to buy health insurance. it didn't solve the more important half, which is the cost of health care in the united states. so what you have is insurance companies having to pay more and more for hospitals and for drugs and the fact is pam care did very little to deal with that. >> do you think a bigger issue is about oversight or proper regulation of skyrocketing medical cost? >> that's the ultimate issue. that is the issue. if you give people access to

something and the costs continue to skyrocket and the government is in the business of subsidizing your access to that, then our taxes go up and it just becomes unsupportable at a certain time. at the same time -- >> -- privilege as opposed to a right. >> right. and at the same time, by the way, that most of us who have insurance from our employers, our deductibles are going up, our co-pays are going up, our premiums are going up, so, you know, that's the real problem. the real problem is the cost. not, you know, how we ip sure the cost. >> steven brill, great to have you here. thank you, sir. >> you're welcome. up next, we'll talk about what you're seeing outside of your window because we're having a rebound of the cold. the sudden return of frigid weather for millions of americans. next hour, what's behind the new trump business trademarks in china?

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does the white house believe there's such a thing as the deep state that's actively working to undermine the president? >> well, i think that there's no question when you have eight years of one party in office, that there are people who stay in government who are affiliated with, you know, joined -- and continue to espouse the agenda of the previous administrations. >> white house press secretary sean spicer weighing in on friday about this notion there's a network of pro-obama operatives rooted in the federal government who are working to sabotage president trump. joining me, kerry lucas, managing director of the independent women's forum and jonathan alter, msnbc political analyst and author of "the center holds: obama and his

enemies." do you believe in this deep state business? >> i think this is really the media's gone a lit tool far in this. i think of course we have a real reason to be we learn about the great intelligence breeches that are going on. you look at what's happened with the big dump this week with the wikileaks releasing all this information about how our intelligence community operates. that's bad news for americans. it's interesting to go through but that's a big loss of national security when it's not just americans learning that but our enemies. so we should be worried about this, but i feel like we're getting too far into looking for a conspiracy and trying to paint everything as if it's one team or another. all america have an interest in protecting our secrets and making sure people doing the hard work of intelligence are able to do what they have to do. instead of seeing this as just another political tug of war. >> so with the people that are

doing hard work within the intelligence community, how much did president trump, jonathan, undermine that potentially by revealing what he has put out as a claim of wiretapping that is yet to be proven? >> before we even get to the wiretapping, i mean president trump during the campaign he praised wikileaks extensively, so carrie's suggesting it was obama liberals who were leaking to wikileaks, the president obama when -- president trump when he was a candidate encouraged wikileaks and then he compared our intelligence services to the nazi's this is just a couple of months ago. so are they gunning for him? you bet they are. and that's just in the welcome to the nfl department and then when he makes up more untrue things, like saying that president obama wiretapped him, which lessens trust and faith in everything that the government

says, of course they're going to be a lot of people inside the government who are very upset about that and they're going to leak on him the way they've leaked on all presidents. let's face it, all presidents face these leaks and his frustration and anger about it is just a sign of more character problems with him that are sending him in a nixonian direction. nixon got so upset about leaks that he started the plumbers and that led to watergate. >> this is president trump and it's not completely unpredictable behavior because we have witnessed certain things that have changed the paradigm of what presidents do, so carrie it's been a week since the president alleged the former president obama wiretapped still no evidence of that work of trump tower and there was a press yesterday he didn't answer that question, why do you think we haven't heard more on that? >> the president should have

chosen his words more careful. the american people are going to want to know what happened. why are so many of the conversations that were taken place became public. clearly there was the "the new york times" has been changing their headlines to try to undermine what trump was referring to and of course i think that the president didn't mean that literally president obama was the one out there bugging his phones, that it was the administration that was using -- was gathering intelligence that included conversations that were going on in trump tower. but again, i think this is becoming more and more of a distraction. we've got a whole lot of -- the democrats have been lodging accusations that seem to imply that the trump campaign was colluding with russian intelligence again without any fact that there was collusions, now you have the administration that is seemed to lodge a lot of -- jonathan. >> they haven't answered basic questions about all these meetings with russians. is the press being aggressive on this? you bet.

you have all -- all of these meetings -- >> but you have nancy pelosi out there having met with the russian ambassador. a lot of people have meetings with jonathan. >> oh, come on. that was not in the context -- that meeting and chuck schumer ten years ago -- >> who are you referring to? whose meetings are you referring to with the campaign? >> let's refer to jeff sessions' meetings coming up during september with the height of the intelligence community coming out saying that the russia was trying to interfere with our election, why would jeff sessions as part of the armed services committee, that took a meeting with the russian ambassador? >> i don't know. i think that this is -- it's worth having investigations into try to get these answers put i do think that we've got it down to this idea there's been nothing that suggest, if there was evidence that the trump campaign was actually working with the russians to undermine the elections, you would have found something by now.

by all means let's go ahead and investigate it. meanwhile i feel like this is the media z-oontly trying to z-akt from one of the bigger issues. the american people want to talk about obamacare. you talk about inheriting a mess. this is the mess one of the big messes that people are frustrated. >> do americans deserve to know that we have elected someone in the palm of a foreign leader? >> of course we do. >> baifl because we don't know. >> they also deserve a press that isn't lodging tremendous accusations like that. you just said that you think we just elected a man who is a puppet of the russians? where is your possible evidence for that? that is -- >> did you go to russia with donald trump? >> i did in 2013. i'm the only american that did. i know exactly what took place in russia and what people are speculating and asking a lot of questions about. i was with him. i know exactly what happened. >> you guys should come out with

a big expose and done -- >> i know that financial ties exist because they were established well established business ties in 2013. now irs taxes would show that. it would also show he exactly what nbc entertainment made, what the ms. universe organization made in taking that show to moscow but if we had donald trump's taxes we'd also find out about projects that were taking place and other moscow interests such -- >> it's a great -- >> we don't have that information because we don't have the taxes. >> i'm so glad -- this is a refreshing change since there was an absolute lack of interest in anything about the tremendous corruption that went on in the payoffs to the clinton foundation. so it is important for the american people -- >> that story was so grossly overcovered and such a pimple compared to this story. >> okay. let's see it. >> since you brought up, rex tillerson and i've got to go. rex tillerson not taking press with him to asia, problem or not a problem? final word. >> it's always good to have the

president involved so they can report on things, so that's a good one for the press. we want a press out there to cover -- >> hopefully it's not the start of more to come. it's a bad behavior. as we witnessed in the last hour mike pence leaving andrews now we have him arriving in louisville. am joy is coming up next. >> my thanks to jonathan and carrie. thanks to you at home want to g. with the united mileageplus explorer card, you'll get a free checked bag, 2 united club passes... priority boarding... and 50,000 bonus miles. everything you need for an unforgettable vacation. the united mileageplus explorer card. imagine where it will take you.

>> it sounds to me as if you just suggested a purge, a governmentwide purge from the white house directed by the white house of any staffer who previously worked for the obama administration, is that what you're suggesting? >> anyone who's a political appointment is what i said and i will use the word purge. i think that needs to happen. i think it's a descriptive word that fits well within the english language and i