good morning, everybody. i'm thomas roberts at msnbc world headquarters in new york. 9:00 in the east, 6:00 out west. here's what we're following for you. we begin with a live picture of the white house. in less than 24 hours since the trump administration suffered a defeat in the republican attempt to do away with obamacare. and as president trump tries to move on to tax reform, he says their inability to get the votes had nothing to do with house speaker paul ryan. >> i like speaker ryan. he worked very, very hard. a lot of different groups. he's got a lot of factions. and there's been a long history of liking and disliking even within the republican party long before i got here, but i've had a great relationship with the republican party. it seems that both sides like trump, and that's good. >> a new warning this morning from house intel ranking member adam schiff amid his committee's

investigation into russia and the president's unsubstantiated wiretap claims. here's what he said in a weekly address earlier. >> mr. president, i implore you, the country implores you, you have chosen two superb people to guide you in general mattis and general mcmaster. a seek their counsel. listen to what they have to say. and cherish the trust and hope that was placed in you by virtue of your office by never again advancing claims that you know or should know are simply not true. >> meanwhile, senate minority leader chuck schumer on the fate of the president's supreme court nominee neil gorsuch. here's what he told my colleague rachel maddow last night. >> the seat that merrick garland was nominated for. mitch mcconnell held it up for a year. well, if they can hold that seat up for a year just to elect a new president under a president who had no investigations, they should delay it for a while.

i'm not saying forever. i'm not saying an amount of time. but let's see where these investigations lead? because to have a president under investigation appoint a lifetime appointment, that's wrong. >> let's bring in nbc's kelly o'donnell live from the white house. kelly, the trump administration really not going to linger on this defeat about health care. what's next? >> reporter: well, we ear learning something about the president's style in this way, thomas, because after all the buildup, all the talk about repealing and replacing obamacare from the president and certainly from republicans more broadly over the years, he seems ready to move on. we've got republicans trying to figure out what to do, democrats feeling very good about this and feeling confident that the law they helped make part of their party's sort of main focus to keep it going, even though it may need some changes. and really the bottom line in washington this morning is what now? this morning the president's eye is already on his next target.

>> we will probably start going very, very strongly for the big tax cuts and tax reform. that'll benext. >> reporter: president trump may be eager to shake off a stunning defeat. >> vote no! we can do better! >> reporter: while house speaker paul ryan seemed to absorb the body blow. >> i will not sugar coat this. this is a disappointing day for us. >> reporter: after all the campaigning, the negotiating, all the touted deal-making skills, failing to get the republican party to pass a core republican promise, repealing obamacare, notably left the president at least briefly humbled. >> we all learned a lot. we learned a lot about loyalty. we learned a lot about the vote-getting process. >> reporter: some of that learning was delivered by the most conservative faction in the house nope as the freedom caucus. their home districts are trump country. >> i'm not betrayed. they're friends of mine. i'm disappointed because we could have had it, so i'm disappointed. i'm a little surprised, to be honest with you.

>> and speaker ryan, who argued for weeks that this was the conservatives' only chance to succeed on a promised repeal, kept his cool. >> well, i don't want to cast blame. there is a block of no votes that we had that is why this department pass. >> reporter: and kept it real. >> yeah, we're going to be living with obamacare for the foreseeable future. i don't know how long lit take to replace this law. >> reporter: president trump, who met with 120 lawmakers to win their support, distanced himself from any blame, despite his own immediate repeal promises. >> i never said repeal and replace it within 64 days. i have a long time. >> reporter: and said the fault lies with democrats. >> i think the losers are nancy pelosi and chuck schumer because now they own obamacare. they own it. 100% own it. >> reporter: those party leaders celebrating a victory, perhaps the happiest they've looked since november 7th. >> today a victory for the affordable care acting, more importantly for the american people. >> reporter: and willing, they

say, to work with president trump, who hinted his deal making may look toward democrats next time. >> if they got together with us and got a real health care bill, i'd be totally open it, and i think that's going to happen. >> reporter: and so at that democrats' news conference i asked them about the president's reaction, saying that he says they own it. the democrats laughed and said the president thought we owned it today, yesterday, and months ago. so they were in a rare moment in the last several months of feeling very good about their ability to be united, how they motivated their constituents at the town hall meetings, calling the offices, so for democrats a really good window. there is acknowledgment in the part of democrats that there are some things with the health care law that are troublesome. can they really work together now? that's hard to say. democrats certainly feel good about their ability to block republicans on this. will that make them more or less

willing to work with them? and will the president, who showed a little bit of a magnanimous outreach saying he wants a bipartisan bill, wants to work with democrats, this he follow through? those are some of the questions we're left with today. and for those really recalcitrant republicans who said that bill was just not going to work for them, and they talk about trying to make some changes, even that will be difficult, because they will not have in any time in the near future a chance to bring a bill back to the floor. that's one of the question marks here. even if they go back to the drawing board, work on it, there just isn't the stomach for republican leadership in the white house to revisit health care anytime soon. they want some wins so to speak, politically on tax reform, on immigration, if they can get those. thomas? >> speaker ryan saying yesterday it's been easy to say no to things and criticize things. it's another thing to lead. now that they have the white house, the senate and the house with this majority, they own it, but the minority will smile

anyway and take the win for now. thanks so much. republicans trying to regroup after president trump's defeat. not able to deliver on that promise that he said to get it done on day one, repeal and replace obamacare, in those oval office remarks after deciding to pull the vote where we have the president saying democrats really own it, they're the losers on obamacare. >> the best thing we can do politically speaking is let obamacare explode. it's exploding right now. many states have big problems, almost all states have big problems. i was in tennessee the other day. i was in kentucky the other day and similar things are happening. so obamacare is exploding. >> joining me now, congressman john yarmuth, the democrat who represents kentucky's third district, also ranking member on

the house budget committee. good to have you with me. you hear president trump saying kentucky has big problems. let's talk about the connect system. what are the issues you'd like to see fixed? >> well, thomas, thanks for having me on. there is one problem that virtually everyone acknowledge, and that's that there are unsustainable aspects to the individual insurance market. now, the individual insurance market affects only about 5% of the country, population-wise. and so virtually everything else in the country is working at least moderately well. medicare, medicaid, the group insurance policy where most americans have their insurance. but we do have problems in this one area, and unfortunately there were mechanisms in the affordable care act set up to deal with that, these issues, and the republicans over the last few years have sabotaged most of those. steven brill in your last hour talked about that. there were ways to indemnify

insurance companies if they got too many sick people and so forth, that republicans refused to fund. so there are things that we can do to make the system better, but in kentucky we've ensured more than half million people out of a population of 4.4 million through the affordable care act, and most of that is operating fairly well. people are getting health care that they never have gotten in their life before. >> we know president trump won on this argument of repealing and replacing obamacare on tay one. talk to us about what it was like behind the scenes of knowing that this was an effort that was doomed to fail because of the lack of republican support. >> i think there was an element of frustration but also an element of vipd case. i've been saying for two years now, and i'm sure i've said it on your programs before, that there really isn't any alternative to the affordable care act except going to single payer, or you can go back to where we were before the

affordable care act. and the republicans have been searching for some kind of alternative that doesn't exist. the fundamental problem is republicans in congress just e sech eventually don't believe that the government should be involved in health care and they're looking for something that doesn't exist anywhere in the world, which is a pure, free market health care system. we're the only country in the world that doesn't have government organized or financed health care system, a single-payer system, and they're trying to find something that nobody else has ever found that works. so that's going to be a problem going forward as we try to improve on the affordable care act, is that their reluctance to have the government get involved at all. >> we know there were issues with the state-run exchange sites. kentucky had one of the more successful programs. also the federal site was an issue under president obama and kathleen sebelius, what they tried to get ramped up. excuse me, sir. but if democrats are determined

to have health care for all, what can be done to make it more competitive so that insurance companies don't drop out? >> well, the first thing we have to do is the only way you can do it is force everybody to be in the individual market. you have to get healthy people in with sick people, younger people in with older people, to make it commercially viable. that's a real problem. again, unless you have mandatory insurance, which we tried. that didn't work very well. we could make it even more punitive, but i don't think the american people would like that. i think the main thing we could do right now to help sustain the individual insurance market is to create a public option. and whether that's allowing individuals to buy into medicare at some actuarially established price or to create some other vehicle, i really think that's the only way to make sure that everybody who's in the individual market has access to care that they can afford. >> you predict tweaks to come,

and we know that the president says the onus is on you, the democrats. they eventually have to come to him. take a listen to this. >> i know some of the democrats and they're good people. i honestly believe democrats will come to us and say, look, let's get together and get a great health care bill or plan that's really great for the people of our country. and i think that's going to happen. >> do you see leader pelosi or any other democratic members being willing to spearhead what president trump is predicting there? >> i think actually there is an opportunity there. i don't think that president trump, particularly with regard to health care, is ideologically committed to any particular course. and, you know, several years ago he was propounding single-payer health care, universal health care. he even talked about it during the campaign, we're going to insure everybody. i think there's an opportunity there to actually try to figure

out how to create the best health care system, not how to figure out how to pursue an ideological goal, which in paul ryan's case has always been a privatized medicare, rollback medicaid as much as you can, and to try to create his ideal free market system. again, that just is impossible. i think president trump probably understands that, and that represents a real opportunity i think for all of us. >> we'll see if you take that opportunity in the near future. president trump would probably be willing to accept those meetings right now. congressman john yarmuth, great to see you. appreciate it. >> thanks, thomas. >> when president trump decided to pull the plug on his health care bill, he picked up the phone and made a call. called a journalist. why you should sometimes answer a call even when it says "blocked." back with more. let's talk asset allocation. -sure. you seem knowledgeable, professional. would you trust me as your financial advisor? -i would. -i would indeed.

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i want to have a great health care bill and plan, and we will. it will happen. and it won't be in the very near future. i really believe there will be some democrat support and that will happen and it will be an even better bill. >> president trump striking a positive tone following his first major legislative defeat. joining me now is a white house reporter for "the washington examiner" and jonathan allen, roll call columnist and author of "shattered: the inside story of hillary clinton's defeat." great to have you both here. gabby, is there any upside to pulling this health care bill? >> well, i think they certainly avoided a major disaster on the floor of the house if this didn't pass and only secured less than 180 republican votes.

i think the administration has an opportunity to regroup and focus on making accomplishments on tax reform. that seem to be the direction they're headed. certainly something just as if not more complicated than health care reform. so it will be interesting to see what happens there, especially after the riff that's kind of been exposed in the republican party through this whole health care debacle. i mean, there is significant discourse that occurred between republicans on the role that government should play in health care and that's going to have a pretty hefty impact going forward if they try to tackle health care again at the end of the year or in 2018 or down the road. >> whatever they want to tackle, jonathan, this shows a real divide coming from the majority party in washington, d.c. and based on the fact that this didn't get a floor vote, there's really not a lot of credible evidence about who is being unloyal to the president on this. there have been a couple articles about a hit list that

begins with an s is they might be keeping at the white house, if you catch my drift. have you heard about that, and do you think that will be a problem for certain republican members moving forward, feeling pressure from the president? >> i think all those republicans that went out there and said ahead of time they were going to vote against the bill, particularly those the president thought could do so without harming themselves with their own constituencies will be on such a hit list, of course, starting with s, as you said. >> you like that. i'm glad you like that. >> yeah. no. well done. i think everybody got it. i think one of the issues here going forward is you've got the folks that took this bill down being emboldened. you've got a president who doesn't really trust the speaker to get votes for him anymore. he let paul ryan wrote this bill. paul ryan wrote a bill that cut taxes for wealthy people, took benefits away from the lower end of the economic spectrum, and you saw what happened. if that bill had been put on the floor, i think, you know, you

would have seen republicans running away from it. i shouldn't say nobody, but a large set of republicans didn't want to be recorded as being for that, which is why they pulled it. and, you know, going forward, they said that they want to do tax reform next. thomas, we have seen obamacare pass, medicare prescription drugs pass, children's health insurance program pass, all since the last time we had a major tax reform bill. tax reform may, in fact, be harder than health care. >> in watch, jonathan, some conservative shows, i was seeing a lot of reaction to speaker ryan and that this is a much bigger black eye for him than president trump. >> i think that's right. he's been planning for as long as he's been in the majority the last six years basically to cut a trillion dollars from medicaid and he put that into this bill. the mechanism where they change from subsidies to tax credits for people who are buying on the individual market, that's something that he came up with in this bill. and of course, you know, the repeal of the obamacare taxes

for net investment income. all of these things are things paul ryan wanted to do. i'm sure he would have prefer to get rid of paul ryan entirely, but this is his bill and this is his house, and donald trump didn't put in enough effort. i think that's fair for those who criticize him that way, but this was paul ryan's deal and he failed to get it done. >> gabby, the president surprised "the washington post" robert costa, surprised him with a phone call and it came in to bob's phone a blocked number ahead of the announcement that the bill was going to be pulled. so here he was recounting that exchange on msnbc with my colleague. take a listen. >> the president called me and said, look, i'm pulling the bill, i made the decision and i wanted you to know and he walked through why he thought that. he didn't blame speaker ryan. it was clear he didn't have the votes. might take away from the conversation, about 15 minutes long, is this is a president who's adjusting to washington. >> first lesson, i think all of us will be answering blocked calls from now on, typically right to voice mail, but what do

you think of that approach, gabby? and is that unusual or is that really just a trump tactic? works. >> no. i think that's classic behavior for this president. certainly something that he would do during the campaign days. if you remember him calming up "the new york times" or calling up t"the washington post," askig them to adjust an article or to weigh in on something that they had reported, to give him their side. i think that that's exactly what he was doing yesterday. he wanted to get out ahead of this, to make it seem as though he wasn't that upset that the bill failed or that it was pulled, rather, and that's exactly what he was doing when he, you know, called up robert costa on the phone and said let me get out ahead of this and tell the american people how i feel about this. i guess you're right, you know, the lesson here, thomas, is certainly to answer any phone call no matter who it's coming from. >> jonathan, do you think that any of those blocked calls are going to be going out to

democrats, basically president trump reaching out to them knowing there are republicans he could not sway but there might be some democrats willing to cork work with him? >> i think there will be a lot of those calls going out, particularly as we've reached the point where we need an deb limit increase. a lot of republicans won't vote for that. that will give leverage to nancy pelosi and chuck schumer. one more thing to note with that call to bob costa, the president by calling "the washington post" reporter bob costa, one of the most credible reporters in the country right now, gets his message out. whatever he says to bob is ooh going to be put in print and put in print and online faster than the house republicans are going to be able to put out their version of events, so in the event there was a circling firing squad, he gets his message out first. he said three times in that interview, i don't blame paul ryan, the emphasis being on

"blame paul ryan." >> right. guys, can we put the tweet back up? bob was tweeting while president trump was still on the phone. so the big headline getting out there about the bill being pulled, but remaining in conversation with president trump. also owning the narrative because there were some reports that speaker ryan went to the white house begging the president not to do this. and they wanted a vote. we know that vote got kicked down the end of the line until the end of the week until it didn't happen. gabby, jonathan, thanks for your time and for putting up with me and my hit list. after the health care defeat, i'll ask a conservative radio talk show host the major change he wants to see in the president, especially when it comes to working with the republicans and democrats in congress. ♪

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welcome back. i'm thomas roberts at msnbc world headquarters in new york. at the half hour, here's what we're watching for you. breaking news in las vegas. police investigating an attempted robbery at the bellagio casino and hotel. police say multiple masked suspects tried to rob a high-end

jewelry store by smashing in the windows. video of this, possibly a suspect here. it's difficult to see but there is someone in a big mask. police say the suspects fled the scene thu a parking garage. right now no word if any arrests have been made. it's also unclear if the suspects got away with any of the merchandise. under fire today, house intelligence committee chair devin nunes, who earlier this week said that the president may have been, quote, incidentally caught up in surveillance by u.s. spy agencies. but in a heated q&a with reporters friday, he seemed to walk back that claim. >> could you clarify whether trump or his associates were monitored or just mentioned in these intelligence reports? >> we don't know until -- we won't know that until we actually receive all of the documentation. it's hard to know where the information came from until you get the reports and have time to go through them and see all the sourcing of the documents. >> let's bring in ken delaney, an msnbc intelligence and national security reporter for us. a kind of confusing week from

the wednesday moment with reporters to the friday moment. how do you interpret the chairman's comments here? is this a true walk-back and a contradiction of what he gave on wednesday? >> i think it is, thomas. stepping back from that, devin nunes really threw a stink bomb into the entire house intelligence committee investigation into trump/russia ties. he came out and told reporters he'd seen dozens of intelligence reports reflecting that trump and his aides were monitored by u.s. intelligence, and he did that without consulting the democrats on the committee and he went to the white house and informed president trump about this and then trump immediately said he felt somewhat vindicated over his bogus claim that obama wiretapped him. even though nunes is saying that never happened. then on friday a you said, it emerges that nunes is really only saying he's aware of reports foreigner to foreigner speaking about donald trump and his aides. and that's routine stuff. that's the nsa intercepting conversations where foreigners are speaking about americans.

that happens every day. there's no scandal there. but what it has done is it's outraged democrats who really believe that nunes cannot lead a fair and independent investigation. >> a meanwhile, adam schiff, his counterpart on the house intel committee, has also been out front at certain aspects of this investigation. have both elected leaders compromised their integrity for what this investigation means going forward? >> well, schiff has been -- has started to push the envelope out of frustration. he started to talk about evidence that he's seen. but now we still have a senate intelligence committee investigation cooking along in a bipartisan fashion. there was news on this front last week. three key figures in this whole issue, paul manafort, carter page, and roger stone, all former trump associates, all accused in that infamous dossier of conspiring with russia to

help trump, something they deny, they've agreed to voluntarily testify before congress about this. now, they're believed to figure in an fbi investigation. it will be interesting to see whether the fbi is content to let these folks speak to congress, because the last thing the fbi wants is congress interfering in a justice department criminal investigation. >> and certainly none of those gentlemen want to perjure themselves with the fbi. >> no, they do not. it will be interesting to see if they ask for immunity before their testimony. >> if we do that, then we know there may be a deal in the works in another capacity. thanks, ken. for more on today's top stories on capitol hill, charlie sikes, host of "indivisible" on nbc. it looks like the russia investigations and the talk of all of this will continue to hang over president trump and his administration with anything that he tries to accomplish. so how do you see this coming to

an end to either prove donald trump right that there is nothing here to see or for the folks out there that believe in this and want to prove donald trump wrong? >> yeah. i mean, i don't know what the facts are, but that's why we have to have an investigation. i think devin nunes basically in the last week made the definitive case for why we need an independent commission. the credibility of his committee i think has been highly compromised and his behavior, his walking back, his soft-shoe routine with the white house was genuinely embarrassing. so i think this is an important investigation. it is crucial to either get to the truth or to lift the cloud. and i don't think there's going to be -- i don't think that the congress has the ability to do that any longer. >> we know that nunes also announced yesterday that former trump campaign manager paul manafort volunteering to speak to the intelligence committee. how do you feel about that? is that a good idea?

especially give. the fact that sean spicer said he played a very minimal role as being the campaign manager? >> well, he was the campaign chairman. look, i am so old that i remember when conservative republicans would have been deeply concerned about the possibility of russian involvement in an american election or these kinds of conflicts of interest. you know, these ties are so deep, they raise so many questions that we have to get to the bottom of it. now, again, is this committee, is the committee headed by devin nunes, is that going to be the vehicle to do it? i don't know. but we keep coming back to the question, why were there so many contacts between the trump team, trump world, and the russians and why have so many of the people involved in this decided to lie about it if there's nothing wrong, if there's -- if it's completely innocent? why the lies? and why is it so hard to find

out what's really going on? >> another point is with unregistered foreign agents working within your team, as we know general mike flynn working for turkey, unregistered, isn't this something president trump should be grateful for, that the intel community was able to expose someone who is potential potentially, as we also snow sally yates took the sergey kislyak conversations to president trump, talking tact fact that sanctions were discussed in those december phone conversations and that could be used as blackmail later down the lines, ultimately fired because he lied to mike pence over it, but shouldn't he be grateful that these types of rats were extinguished from his team? >> yes, and so should americans who really dodged a bullet. the more we find out about mike flynn, the more troubling it is, and the more remarkable it is that he was in the position he was in. it is truly extraordinary that while all of this was going on he was in a position to be, you know, one of the most important

national security officials in the united states government. and this was one of first and most important decisions that president trump made here. so, again, if mike flynn had done nothing wrong, why was he fired? but also i think it's legitimate to go back and ask what was donald trump actually thinking when he put him in this position? >> we know, charlie, the other big story this week is how health care did not make its way to the floor for a vote. and there is not so much finger-pointing going on as there is people trying to avoid the blame or how you can have the white house, the senate, and the house in republican control and not be able to govern. so is this really going to be a paul ryan issue? and it makes him the most vulnerable out of all of this. >> yeah. it's not just finger-pointing. the knives are out. the long flooich knives are out. but apparently they didn't teach the art of the political deal at

trump university. i was struck by three things yesterday. one, president trump seemed relieved that he had been defeated. two, he gave up so quickly and now he's trying to cast it as well maybe this is the best thing that could possibly happen. look, there's no way to gloss over that this was a political disaster for republicans, for paul ryan, but also for donald trump. but donald trump ran on this issue as did other republicans. they talked about it for years and they gave up on trump care after, what, 18 days? so it turns out that all of that repeal and replace was just a brand, just a slogan for president trump. and the more we're finding out about this, the moritis obvious he was not the closer, he was not passionate about the issue, he was not knowledgeable about the issue, this is not something he cared about. and i do think that, yes, a lot of focus is going to be on paul ryan legitimately, but you have

to ask whether or not donald trump and his white house undermined his own bill by sending mixed messages. >> charlie sykes, always great to have you on. thanks for your time. i appreciate it. >> thank you. so good or bad, what voters in the heartland of kansas are telling us about the gop pulling the health care bill for a vote. then coming up next on "a.m. joy," the president and speaker of the house on the same page yesterday. how much stress does yesterday's defeat put on their burgeoning relationship? ♪

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youthat's why you drink ensure. sidelined. with 9 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. for the strength and energy to get back to doing... ...what you love. ensure. always be you. as we know, president trump tasted major failure in the collapse of the health care bill. but how are his supporters reacting? vaughn hilliard, what are you hearing? are people mostly confused by the fact they couldn't get this done in washington? >> reporter: good morning, thomas. yeah, we've been in wichita, kansas, for the last 36 hours as

that drama on capitol hill unfolded. i want to take you specifically to the mayfair clinic. this clin sick a free health care clin where i cic where a l people, a lot of trump voters, marly uninsured workers, go. they offer free health care services to these individuals. amid much confusion over exactly what this replacement bill that didn't go to a vote would do, one factor was not lost on voters around here, was the congressional budget offices report that said 24 million people ultimately would lose their health insurance, one of the places that would be impacted by that would be this health clinic. i want to play you the executive director and her thoughts when i visited her yesterday afternoon. >> we already are overholded with patients on a daily basis that we couldn't afford to keep our doors open to see or to serve that many people with this new bill if it were to pass. so i am all for it not passing and that it was set to rest at

this point. >> would have loved to have seen who would have voted for it and who wouldn't have. i would have loved to have seen, you know, where various congressmen and eventually where various senators really stand on this issue. as much as i like trump's kind of up frontness, you never know truly how up front he really is. >> reporter: that last gentleman was dr. muller, the chiropractor right next to the clinic. he's not only a volunteer there but has been a patient himself there. he doesn't qualify for medicaid but he says premiums are too high on the exchange for him to ultimately buy into a health care plan on the exchange. now, ultimately what we've heard going from oklahoma and louisiana, texas over the last two weeks is confusion over, one, what this replacement bill did, which, you know, in talking with these people, they've said, listen, we don't understand exactly what it's going to do and we're skeptical of its ultimate impact on us, which republicans on capitol hill,

they're having a tough time ultimately determining what an order expanding coverage. they said, you know, that perhaps talking to these voters that they don't want their health care coverage cut but they only want it expanded but they want it more affordable. thomas? >> i think the white house probably shares dr. muller's frustration, not knowing where gop members of congress would have come down on this with a yay or a nay vote and have them on record. vaughn hillyard, thank you. the big winners and losers on capitol hill following the defeat of the health care bill. here's some of congressman john lewis and what he had to say about it before it was pulled. >> health care is a right. it is not a privilege verved for a wealthy few. whatever prompted this body to paz this bill and lose our souls. this bill is a shame. it is a disgrace. dear predictab,

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i think the losers are nancy pelosi and chuck schumer because now they own obamacare. this is not a republican health care, this is not anything but a democrat health care. >> and this president, whenever he runs into trouble, he points fingers. he's got to learn to lead and see what he did wrong but that's not his way. he points finger of blame. >> and the blame game does begin just hours after republicans pulled their health care bill amid rumors they didn't have enough votes to get it passed.

>> nice try on the spin there by the president. this is a political fiasco for him. i do think there is a sill ver lining to this cloud for donald trump. if this bill had gone through, there would have been a real whiepout in 018. it was hugely unpopular, 17% support for this bill. i think what they'll do is cut taxes on the wealthy.

they'll get a tax bill through much more easily than people think later this year. >> patrice, what do you make of that? right now we're seeing republicans have control of the white house, the senate and the house and they couldn't do something they said they wanted to do for nearly eight years, which is repeal and replace obamacare. do you think they can come to consensus for tax reform? >> i do think that they can. we have higher taxes and we want to see the economy grow from the meager growth under president obama to something that will really be good for americans. i'll agree with jonathan on a couple of points but also i'll agree that we have an opportunity that the administration struggled and that, you know, it was hard to get through obamacare repeal. but the issue which i think was highlighted was that all conservatives wanted to appeal a

bad bill, which was obamacare, and the democrats are going to have to wear that. it was the question of how do you move forward? i think that's where you see differences in philosophy, on the size of the government and health care. >> the judgment was there about repealing it but there was no craft of what to replace it with. >> there are differences across the board with consideraervativ that it should look like. there are some that thought it should be a big deal and others thought it hit at certain specific areas of health care that needed to be reformed. i think the conservative war will come together on that. >> to say differences, thomas, is putting it rather mildly. the president was sabotaged by his own party by this, by the freedom caucus. they have this idea that somehow

the united states can be the only country in the world that has a pure free market system for health care, which doesn't work. i think the president, who in the past has understood that it doesn't work for health care and was actually a supporter of single payor going back some years, i think he understands after a decent interval, he will negotiate with democrats to fix obamacare, affection what's wrong with it now that they have decided not to destroy it. it it's incumbent on the republican party, which is now in control of the government, to not saab saj obamacare. it was almost like they were wishing for it to fail. you're talking about people's lives here. they need to get on with the business of fixing it, not trying to wreck it since they've already -- >> hold on, guys. there's been sabotage kind of baked in since the very beginning of it because

republicans didn't want it to and there were so roll outs on exchanges. does that hurt donald trump who in many interviews said he wants to see everybody covered. he wants to believe and nopes this is a life-and-death issue for many americans and doesn't want folks left hanging in the wind. isn't that a problem? >> it was a big problem to ensure that every single american has coverage. but health care is a very personal thing. the challenge with obamacare to begin with was -- i can point to historically black colleges where consumers lost their plans because of obamacare mandates. to move forward of where we're at today, it going to be a challenge to ensure that everyone is going to be covered. but keeping obamacare is not going to do that. >> patrice, this is what is clear now, obamacare, as paul

ryan said, is here to stay. republicans need to give up the ghost of destroying obamacare and got on with the work of affectioni fixing obamacare. this is a critical moment for republicans. they're governing. >> thanks to all of you at home. that's going to do it for me this hour. i'm thomas roberts. "a.m. joy" up next. in the state of texas. ♪ ♪

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