tv Andrea Mitchell Reports MSNBC March 27, 2017 9:00am-10:01am PDT
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conversations about real world impacts in this community if the affordable care act were to go away. >> thank you so much, rahema ellis in ohio for us. thank you for watching this hour of msnbc live. right now, andrea mitchell reports. >> and thank you, chris jansing. right now, breaking news. more suspicions surrounding the house intelligence chair's secret white house briefing last week 37 as we learn more details where devin nunes got his supposed secret intel. and the president's son-in-law also a top white house adviser prepares to face questioning by the senate intelligence committee on that alleged russian connection. and we have a series of people very close to the president who have extensive ties with russia. >> you keep saying there's a lot more smoke. >> there's a lot more. >> do you think the fire's there. >> time will tell. >> senator mark warner joining me. will the president reach out
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to dras to push tax reform or infrastructure? as a splintered republican caucus points fingers over the health care debacle. >> well, i don't really blame anyone in particular. but the freedom caucus was brought to the table and refused to working to having a better bill. >> so when it comes to tax reform and border security, when it comes to other big issues we've talked about accomplishing and that we promised the voters, let's do what we said. if we do that, we'll be fine. if we don't, we may have the same problems on this last bill. >> and target paul ryan? is it just coincidence as the white house claims in the aftermath of the failed health care vote, president trump promoted a fox news program on twitter which began like this. >> my open last night, he said speaker ryan should step down over his failure to deliver the votes on his health care bill
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. and good day, i'm andrea mitchell with breaking news on two big stories here in washington. latest twist involving devin nunes, it the house intelligence committee chairman now admitting to meeting a secret source on white house grounds the day before his wednesday press conferences. to view information about president trump's false accusation that president obama wiretapped him at trump tower during the transition. all signs pointing to him being briefed at a secure nsc facility in the old executive building right next door to the white hous the night before he said he was going to brief the president. chairman nunes has repeatedly refused to share his source with fellow committee members or to the press. and on the russia investigation, jared kushner is being called to of it before the senate intelligence committee about his conversations with the russian ambassador as part of the investigation into russia's hacking of the election. joining me now is nbc national correspondent peter alexander at the white house and capitol hill
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correspondent kasie hunt. first, peter, it the white house, is there any explanation for whom devin nunes was talking to? he said in in the white house proper. >> as we understand it from his office, that meeting took place for him to view the information from his source here on the white house grounds. as you know, that doesn't mean it took place in the residence, in the west wing. it could have happened in an office ablg adjacent to here. this is notable. not just anybody has access to the white house grounds. we heard from a long-time former aide who said in effect either the source is a white house staffer, the meeting was coordinated by a white house, or by a white house staffer because members aren't just given access to the white house grounds. this is notable because it raises questions about the independence of this investigation that is being led by the house intelligence committee with its leading member, the airman, in
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devin nunes, this republican who by this suggestion there now is great circumstantial evidence that it would an library this information came from somebody within the white house that he would have come here the night before he made the announcement to the press that he got the information here. the next day he made that statement before the press and ultimately came right back here to the president. the suggestion from critics is this was done in effect to try to basically give political cover to the president. what's also worth noting on this issue is that nunes who in his first public comments suggested he had seen as he described evidence that at least showed that donald trump and his associates had been monitored according to the information that he had reviewed by the end of the week indicated that there wasn't enough for him to determine whether in at that particular time they had been monitored or perhaps just mentioned by foreign targets by foreigners who were talking amongst themselves about either associates or the president himself. >> and just to backup a bit to
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what we were discussing, you and i last thursday and friday, the president took it to be vindicating him. the republican campaign committee started raising money on it in an e-mail. and the fact is, that the president said he was not watching devin nunes' news conference on wednesday. i'm sorry, i have to clear my throat, but he already cement to know what the content was before munness even arrivedt the white house when he was talking to "time" magazine. >> reporter: that was striking. this was part of the conversation had i with sean spicer on friday during the press briefing where i said 0 him, given the fact that devin nunes has now said it's not clear whether the president or associates were monitored or perhaps just mentioned in these intelligence reports that you say that devin nunes said he viewed, what is the president vindicated by? his answer was basically obviously there is something
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there. it's not entire clear what something is there, but more striking is the idea that the chairman, the republican who is overseeing this investigation may possibly, at least the appearance is, come here to the white house and had a conversation with a white house staffer about information that's part of an investigation into the president and perhaps some white house aides. >> and kasie hunt, the democrats on thursday said they were were giving nunes till friday to share the information. did they ever see that information. >> reporter: at this point, andrea, we know they were supposed to have had a hearing on tuesday. but that's been rescheduled in exchange for an fbi and intelligence agency briefing for the house intelligence committee. so in theory, that may be where they could view such information because at this point, we don't have knowledge that adam schiff or the democrats have been able to read through this information that nunes says he saw. nunes refused to share the
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content of it or 0 share the source with adam schiff and democrats on the committee. now, he did and this got overlooked a lint in all the health care news on thursday and friday, but nunes did apologize to members of the committee for not bringing this information to them before he took it public. i think there was a little bit of an acknowledgement that perhaps this was mishandled. he said you know, you use judgment sometimes. you make the right judgment, sometimes you don't. but there was an indication that he realized he had put a foot wrong in whoe unveiled this. does the pressure ratchet up on them to call for an independence investigation, does the house speaker have to say he doesn't have confidence in devin nunes? on the one hand, it seems like those are things republicans would never go for. on the other hand, we have seen intense pressure around this issue make -- make adjustments. you saw jim comey publicly
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acknowledge that investigation after members of congress, republicans and democrats alike expressed frustration with how events were unfolding. so it is possible we could see something unpredictable around this. >> and kasie, i want to play for you judge jeanine pirro's program from saturday night where she went off on the speaker of the house after the president had tweeted watch her at 9 pp on fox. let's play a little bit what she had to say saturday night. >> paul ryan needs to step down as speaker of the house. you know, americans elected the one man they believed could do it. a complete understander, someone beholding to no one but them. and speaker ryan, you come in with au your swagger and experience and you sell them a bill of goods which ends up a
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complete and total failure. and you allow our rez in his first 100-days to come out of the box like that? based on what? >> so kasie, the speaker's office, what are they saying? how are they viewing this? i know what they're saying saying publicly. they've got to be worried donald trump is the getting ready to shoot real ammo at them? >> reporter: i feel like there's been a little bit of a difference between the public and the private and what i think really if there already nerves around this, it's just ha this president is completely unpredictable. i think the speaker has felt and has confidently said in public and from what we can tell in private, as well, they are having long phone conversations every day. the president seems to be on board with the speaker. you heard reince priebus give this forceful defense of the speaker on the sunday shows over
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the weekend. but there have always been sort of lingering questions. when the health care debate was going on, it was this question of whether or not the president was suddenly going to decide this wasn't the bill that he supported. and there was nervousness around that. they had to work hard to convince members that the president was on board and invested in this. so i think it's a relationshi that is one that they have both clearly worked very hard but something that could potentially be fragile, as well. so far, that's really the only call tau have seen for the speaker to step down. otherwise, it's been pretty muted from republicans up here on capital little. the reality is, it's not clear who else would even be able to step into that job. it seems that you know, it's likely the president would he have to at least have somebody else in mind if he would push for something like that behind the scenes. the question for the speaker and the challenge is that he set up a lot of the agenda around this health care bill. they do want to move on to tax
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reform. they now are missing billions of dollars they wanted to use in that tax reform plan. the process for doing budgets was contingent on them getting this bill done so they could move onto the next year which would include tax reform. it's a pretty early blow to what was a carefully balanced agenda. i think there are some challenges for him in recovering that. >> and a lot of questions being asked as to who thought you could do health reform in 17 days without any hearings and without in the president knowing what was in the bill when he meets with the freedom caucus, peter, and these conservative republican who's care about nothing but the substance and he says i don't care about that are expletive deleted. that's not the way to lobby the freedom caucus. >> no -- >> it was very fast. >> yeah. >> and peter, just 0 put a final button on it, one wonders what the learned about the importance
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of policy underlying politics. >> reporter: aware right. it the white house even before that vote was pulled, that bill was pulled late last week, sean spicer tweeted about plans as the secretary of the treasury was talking about tax reform by august. these guys were moving on before this thing was over. >> peter and kasie, thank you both so much. mark warner, the man at the center of the intelligence committee on the democratic side, the top democrat joining me now. senator, thank you so very much. >> thank you. >> talk about devin nunes, the democrats and even his fellow republicans said wait, he didn't get that briefing in the house. so you must have gone elsewhere. there was suspicion he went to langley. now we know he went to the white house to get that information. what does that tell us about that whole drama last week? >> andrea, you can't make this stuff up. if this was a movie, you would turn it off because you wouldn't believe it's believable. and i and i know both chairman
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burr in the senate side and democrats, republicans, we don't know what mr. nunes is talking about, what kind of information. we've queried the intel community. i don't think they know what he's talking about. it seems more an suspicious that he's somehow going to the white house and anybody who knows anywhere in the white house complex whether the eisenhower building or the white house itself, you have to be escorted. who is he meeting with? was it a source or somebody from the administration? and then he goes through this what appears to be a charade where he comes out the measurement day and briefs the president before he tells the democrats. i'm not sure he's told the other house republicans what this, quote unquote, information was. so it raises a lot of questions. i know adam schiff, the leading democrat on the house intel committee wants to the continue a bipartisan investigation. i wish him all the luck. that's not how we're going to proceed in the senate though. >> snat senator mccain called for an independent investigation because of what's happening on the house side.
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do you have confidence that you can continue in the senate with your investigation even if the house is in disan pray? >> i have confidence we're going to move forward. the number of republicans and democrats, i give chairman burr a lot of credit, suess collins, marco rubio, roy blunt with, james lankford. we're going to follow the intel no matter where it leads. the only challenge with an independent commission is you would have to pass a law that would take months, you would have to have the president sign it. then my fear would be, both sides would try to put their most partisan members on that independent commission. partisan outsiders. and that would push off this investigation for maybe close to a year. i think the american people deserve answers a lot sooner. we've go the a number of -- we're going to be announcing this week, we have our first publiceang and announcing the fact we've got number of interviews scheduled. we want to do this methodically and do it in a bipartisan way. >> there is reporting that one of those interviews is with jared kushner, the president's
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son-in-law. can you explain when that will happen? >> he has volunteered to come in and be interviewed. we want to have that at the appropriate time. we've still got a lot of law intelligence we have to collect. we've got some access unprecedented access to all our members out at the cia but there are additional documents, additional nsa documents, other things we have to get the information so we can ask the right questions before we saw mr. kushner or any of the other names that are kind of being bandied about. >> the nunes, the house chairman has postponed unilaterally postponed the public hearing with james comey and former director brannan and sally yates that was to have happened tomorrow. are you planning to bring them in and who are your witnesses on thursday at your public hearing? >> well, we're going to bring in everyone at the appropriate time. and you know, i don't want to bring in some of these names that have been mentioned till we know exactly the right questions
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to ask. and you've got to then go through all the intelligence we've not all had full access to yet. in terms of thursday, what we're going to do, it probably won't be an as explosive as last monday, we're going to bring in experts to demonstrate how russia used these techniques in our past election and how they have used these techniques in places in eastern europe. it's important to remember what we know for a fact that russians massively interfered in our ections. they hacked into both campaigns but selectively leaked on the democrats. they had a thousand paid internet trolls in effect creating what's called botnets taking over computers and overwhelming search engines of some of our most prominent devices. if you ghouled, you would end up with fake news and russian news. the russians are very good at this and we have to be on guard because they're doing it right now in france and germany and quite honestly will too it again
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in 2018 and 2020 if we're not more on guard. >> what is your reaction to the arrests of hundreds if not as many as a thousand people including a prominent dissident in moscow in the largest demonstration since 2012 against vladimir putin? >> it's one more reason putin is nuts. he's a bully, kind of a thug. he's taken out journalists and takes out any kind of protesting opposition. and yet, we have both candidate trump and president trump only say nice things about him. in a way that's just makes me scratch my head. we see a republican platform that only changed one item from 2012 to 2016. where it became more pro-russia, less pro-ukraine. this raises a lot of questions from republicans and democrats alike, why does president trump have this bromance with a figure
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that europeans, americans, all have felt has been in many ways an adversary and clearly not somebody that would act in the best interests of america. >> you're on the senate finance committee. and people from the treasury secretary on down seem to think that tax reform is going to be easier than health care. i covered the '86, 1986 tax reform measure under president reagan and i know how complicated it was. >> andrea. >> your take away on how easy it will be as a goal. >> i spent 2 1/2 years with the so-called gang of six bipartisan effort to try to bring the simpson-bowles report which had a big piece of tax reform in it. anyone that thinks that tax reform is going to be easier han health care doesn't know their way around the tax code. what i'm trade of, i know we need to do tax reform and bring some ofhat corpora profits offshore, bring it back but i
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also know with we're trillion in debt, we can't do this by simply cutting taxes without putting some more revenue back in the bank because otherwise, our debt levels will crush our kids and our grandchildren and not in the future. but as interest rates go up, remember one thing. every interest rate point that goes up 1% adds $140 billion a year of additional federal debt service. that's before the tax cuts for wealthy that the trump plan seems to be focused on. >> do you think the president would be well advised to start working with democrats? he seemed to try to blame the democrats for the failure of health care but they argue no one reached out to them for repealing something that had been the legacy of president obama. now, is it time for bipartisanshipship? is there a reset? >> i've been involved in virtually every gang up here. i'm working the only place in america where being a gang member is a good thing. i'm open to any kind of
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bipartisan effort. what happened on health care was, the american people said this was a crummy replacement. it would have taken 24 million people off the health carrolls. it would have raised costs for seniors. it was a massive tax cut for the wealthy and would have shifted as a former governor, i know, shifted medicaid costs to the states. that was a bad deal. and it didn't deserve to go forward on tax reform, if they want to do it in a way that is fair, that is not just an advantage for the well off in this country, but actually makes our code simpler, sign me up but not if it's going to add trillions and trillions to the debt. >> finally, judge gorsuch, where do you stand today on the nomination? >> listen, i met with the judge. he's an intelligent guy. but in my private meeting and then in the hearings last week, i felt his answers were extraordinarily evasive. he was unwilling to come down on any prior cases. my understanding was he wouldn't even vouch for brown versus
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board of education. that to me raises huge concerns. i want to go out, i've got a few more of his opinions in lovy lobby that was way over the line that i want to read. i've got more homework to do. >> isn't there a big risk for dras in following what chuck schumer laid out which wld be a filibuster strategyhat could result in a rule change by the publicans? >> i think that a rules change in the senate when you're talking about supreme court judges or for that matter legislation, that the senate is different from the house because they've had that 60-vote margin. either political party, we had power for a while, this is going to go back and forth. we do great damage to the institution if anybody were to change that filibuster rule. if there's a way to avoid that, i would like to be part of it. >> senator mark warner, thanks for being with us today. coming up, a massive crack down in russia after a rare act
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of defiance against president putin. you're watching andr"andrea mitl reports" on nbc. then the chronic, widespread pain drained my energy. my doctor said moving more helps ease fibromyalgia pain. she also prescribed lyrica. fibromyalgia is thought to be the result of overactive nerves. lyrica is believed to calm these nerves. woman: for some, lyrica can significantly relieve fibromyalgia pain and improve function, so i feel better. lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions or suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worsening depression, or unusual changes in mood or behavior. or swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling, or blurry vision. common side effects are dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain and swelling of hands, legs and feet. don't drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don't drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who have had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. with less pain, i can be more active.
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contributor and former u.s. ambassador to russia mike mcfaul joining me now from stanford. the scale of these extraordinary given what's been happening to opposition leaders in both journalism and politics. >> absolutely. i think even the protesters themselves were surprised by the numbers that came out because remember, it is dangerous to protest in russia. people are arrested as you just reported. hundreds, maybe a thousand people arrested. what was very striking to me about this is this demonstrations did not just happen in moscow and st. petersburg. they happened in dozens of cities throughout russia. >> fauk talk to me about alexly navalny if i'm pronouncing his name correctly and what the risks are to him. >> well, he went to jail. they also raided his offices, arrested several of the members of his organization, confiscated
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his equipment. he's the leading guy opposition figure exposing corruption in russia. remember, this demonstration was devoted to anti-corruption was the main theme. and just a few weeks ago, he put out a major video about 45-minute video exposing allegedly i should say but you know in his view corruption from the prime minister medvedev. millions of people saw that video and i think that led to in part spark the numbers we saw yesterday. >> and this was unusual because there is a statement from the state department in the name of mark toner, the spokesman that the united states strongly condemns the detention of hundreds of peaceful protests are throughout russia on sunday key takening peaceful protests is an fronts to core democratic values. that from the tillerson state department from the trump white house. obviously, this is the first time they've really strongly
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criticized something that putin's done. >> well, but you're making a very important distinction that it was mr. toner who i used to work with when i was in the government at the state department. that statement that cape out which i applaud, i think it was the appropriate kind of statement, that would have been a statement you would see during the obama administration. does not sound at all like what president trump has said about vladimir putin and russia. i don't think he's ever used the words human rights, democracy in russia in the same sentence. he praises putin as a strong leader. what we don't know, is this the beginning of a policy shift for the entire administration or does this show a policy rift between the state department and the white house. >> or even was it approved at the highest levels. i assume it was because there's very little done that is not approved at the top because there's nobody in the middle anymore. so there's still -- there's been a nomination of an attorney john
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sullivan to be the deputy secretary but there are no official deputies undersecretaries, assistant secretaries and the like. also what happened in kiev last week with the assassination of dennis vor ren cov, the former russian mp, he was a member of the duma and the inner circle but fled to ukraine and became someone blowing the whistle. is this just another signal it is very dangerous 0 go up against vladimir putin? >> well, of course, we don't know all the facts. it needs to be investigated but the preliminary investigation what we've heard from officials in kiev, this was a political assassination done abroad. it wasn't even in russia. it was done abroad. against a putin critic who was prepared to testify against him. yes, of course, it's very sobering that they would have the audacity to do that in
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another sovereign country country. i want to be clear there are some murk can i details. we need to have a full investigation. so far this looks very scary. >> just adding to the list of scary thingsing that are coming out of putin's russia. thank you so much, thanks for being with us today. >> thanks for having me. coming up next, the senate showdown. how far will democrats go to try to stop the confirmation of neil gorsuch? you're watching andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. you do all this research
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and just moments ago, the senate judiciary committee wrapped up a fast meeting to postpone the committee's confirmation vote on supreme court nominee neil gorsuch to monday next week after chuck schumer declared he will require a filibuster requiring 60 votes to try to delay the confirmation. joining me now is james pindell boston globe political reporter. and ruth, i defer to you first. i don't ow if james is an atrney but i know ruth is. speaking of the la and looking at this nomination hearing as compared to predecessors who went before the court, he was
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more evasive, less forthcoming than most? how would you put it on a scale? because the criticism from democrats could very well be partisan is he wouldn't disclose anything. name, rank and serial number. >> on a scale where judge bork in 1987 was the sort of let it all hang out nominee. look what happened to him. >> every nominee since has been more on this very far let's not talk about things end of the scale. on that so it's a pretty narrow window. it's not like people discussed their judicial philosophy at length. that said, he is in the give up name as you said, name rank and serial number. i would put him with justice ginsburg who did a very good job. she didn't need to tell them anything more. he was reluctant to say things that other nominees have said without sort of being under
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duress. i support brown versus board of education. i believe there's a right to privacy in the constitution which numerous. >> roe v. wade. >> numerous republican nominees have said before. he just kept saying i can't answer. it wouldn't be proper for me to answer. there's no difference between republican -- there's no such thing as a republican judge or democratic judge which is a little bit ludicrous because why if that's true, why dide -- why did the senate not just confirm merrick garland. i think in some ways he did not do himself any favors or his handler who's told him to do this, you know, suggested it didn't do him any favors. you could have given up a teeny bit and maybe gotten a little bit more wiggle room among those democrats willing to wiggle. which is not a lot. >> speak of democrats perhaps willing to wiggle, james halpern, your neck of the woods,
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pat leahy the most senior member of the senate is now saying that he won't support the fill buster. he'll vote for cloture. but not clear that he would vote for judge gorsuch to be on the court. so you've got a number of democrat who's might be willing to vote for him. >> right, then you had had leahy's spokesperson come out quickly afterwards, saying no, no, no, i know what he said 0 this vermont publication but he is still technically undecided when it comes to the filibuster and the nomination. ruth mentioned, this is a very delicate matter. very few supreme court nominees had the political situation he has with merrick garland preceding him with democrats very upset if they would be open minded in the first place. i think obviously, we're delaying this vote in the senate judiciary committee. right now, this is an extremely delicate situation. i'm not sure that neil gorsuch did anything to push the ball a little bit more to give him more
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of the benefit of the doubt >> one of the things that was most compelling to democrats from their point of view was when senator franken was questioning judge gorsuch. let's play a little bit of that. >> i think you're allowed to talk about what happened to the last guy who was nominated in your position. you're allowed to say something without being without getting involved in politics. you can express an opinion on this. >> senator, i appreciate the invitation. but i know the other side has their views of this and your side has your views of it. that by definition is politics. >> okay. >> and senator, judges have to stay outside of politics. >> clearly, that was not going to make al franken very happy. but by pursuing this very narrow path, he avoided controversy.
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he may have created a little more controversy for himself but avoided being specific on just about anything. >> once you're confirmed, you're confirmed. you can do whatever you want. >> for life. >> for life. >> the question is, how to most effectively get there. so the gorsuch, the theory of the gorsuch nomination has been name, rank serial number. don't give up anything. you know, democrats already riled up about what happened to garland are not going to give you leeway. we'll peel off enough to get past the filibuster hurdle or we will change the rules. neither side really wants to change the rules. it is kind of not in their interests. so i'm a little bit surprised that he didn't ge the wobbly red state democrats ten of them are up for re-election next year, a little bit more to go on. give him a little bit of, i watch -- just as he said that whenever anybody including the president attacks the judiciary,
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he finds it disheartening. find some way to sort of express regret about the garland situation without going too far. you can do that. >> there was a gracenote james in one of his first calls after being nominated was 0 merrick garland. >> i was going to mention what ruth just mentioned. he made the call. acknowledging the awkward situation and trying to be classy about it. as he began this process with private meetings with senators he had comments about his regretting what the president was saying on these attacks on the judiciary. president trump doesn't have a problem with that. he opted his cabinet nominees were disagreeing with him. you would gorsuch could give more as ruth mentioned to some of these ten red state democrats up for re-election next year. >> james pin del, good to see you again and ruth markus as always, thank you. we'll be right back. coveted. their leadership is instinctive. they're experts in things you haven't heard of -
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and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. want more proof? ask your rheumatologist about humira. what's your body of proof? we don't know what mr. nunes is talking about, what kind of information. we've queried the intel community. i don't think they know what he's talking about. the only challenge i have with an independent commission is you'd have to pass a law that would take months, you would have to have the president sign it, and then my fear would be both sides would try to put their most partisan members on that independent commission. partisan outsiders. and that would push off this investigation for maybe close to a year. >> the top democrat on the senate intelligence committee mark warner moments ago on the
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show talking about the investigations into possible trump russia fipz joining me is michael allen a former republican staff director for the house permanent select committee on intelligence and also serving a a national serity council staffer under president grge w. bush. so you've been there on the house intelligence committee. the way that the chairman nunes has proceeded is pretty remarkable. this is a committee that has the advantage, has the reputation of being bipartisan. >> it's definitely outside the norm. i mean it sounds like what happened is is that the committee's got a whistleblower or at least someone is in charge or in touch with chairman nunes and has information on signals intercepts of as nunes has said non-russians and so it all depends on what the meaning of the word "surveillance" is. if it's that we have transcripts of people who were say calling the indian ambassador and or
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people that the indian ambassador was calling in the trump white house, that's what he's probably seen, signals intelligence reports that indicate that and he must have decided to go public with it because it helps vindicate what the president is saying. > but does it really vindicate in that the president was clear, used the word wiretap. he said president obama wiretapped hip in trump tower in the transition. this is incidental collection non-russian related. not connected to the investigation. >> right. >> so it's mixing apples and oranges and the fact that he would go to the white house complex clearly to an nsc room. >> right. >> -- to look at that kind of signals intelligence, you need to be plugged into a computer that would not be accessible from congress. >> yeah, that's right. th house intelligence committee skiffs wouldn't have access this kind of sensitive intelligence. that sounds like why he needed to go elsewhere, get the numbers
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or any other identifying markers on then actual piece of intelligence so his committee could then in turn request it. but go ahead. >> doesn't it sound as though the white house set it up? somebody in the white house? he's saying it wasn't a white house official. it could be an intelligence official working at the nsc. either on his own or under direction probably from someone else saying come on down. we've got something to show you and you come and tell the president. it sounds like a complete setup to try to make the president's false allegation look credit credible. >> it is curious that they would need to go to a scif at the white house in order to make this exchange. i think that chairman nunes probably will have to explain over time who exactly it was. he said already today that it was an intelligence community official, not an nsc or a white house person. but i think the questions will continue about just what the motivation of that person was, was he a legitimate
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whistleblower or was this is somehow orchestrated. >> in fact, intelligence officials many of them, many, many of them work at the nse. they are sent there for the duration of an administration or for a number of years. that's where they work. they don't go out to the dni or langley. threw work at the white house. >> there are number of folks detailed from cia to the intelligence office in the usen hour executive office building. >> and they could be working for you know, general mcmaster, for mcfarland, the deputy -- for any number of people. >> that's true but i think they would still be considered for purposes of what mr. nunes said as an intelligence community official. he says it wasn't a white house staffer per se. and so we'll just have to try and figure out who this person was. having it on the white house grounds does make it a little bit questionable. and so there's a lot more facts that need to cop out. >> the fact that the republican
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campaign committees were so fast to put out e-mails trying to raise money off of the president's vindicated when he wasn't, and the president doesn't seem to still be willing to acknowledge that this was all a false flag. >> well, the campaign committees i think do what they do on their own and what they think will raise them money. there are plenty of examples on both sides of the aisle of them getting out there in front with information that they think tends to support whoever their leader is. but look, there's a lot of questions that have to go -- they have to be answered in the course of this investigation and it sounds like the white house by virtue of letting roger stone go out, saying that jared kushner is more than willing and indeed volunteering to go before the senate intelligence committee, i think they know this isn't going away and they'd better get out and try and explain what did happen on the theory that you know in, their minds, there's no there there. >> michael allen, thank you very
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much. >> thank you. >> thanks for joining us today. coming up with, health care now in the rearview mirror, what is next for the president you'reatching andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. >> she now bottles her great grandfather's caribbean drink and she's trying to build it into a national brand. but she says she needs help. we answered her call and now she ease getting a "your business" makeover.
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and the president says he now wants to move on to tax reform, having failed to deliver on health care. joining me is "the washington post" political reporter. dan, where does he go next, given what's happened? tax reform is hardly an easy goal. >> well, there's no easy lifts ahead of him. if you talk about the big agenda items, tax reform is very, very complex, probably if not more complex than health care. it's not clear how they actually go about that. so we don't know what they're intending to do on that. his budget priorities are going to run into a fight in congress. they have a continuing resolution they have to deal with. there's a lot of choices they have tomake. he would clearly like to do tax reform, but we are awaiti the details. >> and the fact that he says he wants to reach out to democrats, are democrats in any mood to be responsive? is it in their interest to try to do something with the president? >> i don't think so at this
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point. i think that as they have watched him attack them on the one hand, and then flounder in terms of putting together a consensus within his own party on health care, i think they're going to be very standoffish. he could try to do something on infrastructure with the democrats. it's something democrats have talked about wanting to do. i don't know whether in terms of the way he would do it is the way democrats would want to do it. that would be one opportunity. i think at this point, the democrats are going to be very reluctant to play ball with him unless they see that it's truly in their interest. and right now i don't think they see that. >> do you believe the -- it was just a coincidence that he tweeted that everyone should watch judge pirro's show and she opened with a blast at paul ryan? >> i have no idea. the coincidence is delicious, as everybody suggests. but i have no idea what prompted that tweet or how much he knew or didn't know about what she was going to say.
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>> and the whole relationship, more to come on that for sure. dan balz, thank you very much. we'll be right back. nosy neighbor with a keen sense of smell... glad bag, full of trash. what happens next? nothing. only glad has febreze to neutralize odors for 5 days. guaranteed. even the most perceptive noses won't notice the trash. be happy. it's glad.
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of their party's health care bill. can the gop find its way forward or is the party fractured beyond repair? who's in charge? president trump trying to rebound after a rough week. are washington outsiders pressing the president to run the white house like a business when everyone else is still playing politics? the senate intelligence committee's investigation into russian ties. we begin with the investigation of whether the trump campaign conspired with the russians during the election. chairman devin nunes was on the white house grounds the day before he announced the president may have been swept up in surveillance of foreign nationals. we're learning the senate intelligence committee plans to question jared kushner. let's get right to our team of correspondents. following the latest developments. halle jackson is at
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