the short-term. >> ivanka prevails. you heard it here first. >> you can get the obama shirt. that does it for this hour. i'm nicole wallace. mtp daily starts now. >> you are only about a second or two late. stick around. if it's tuesday, how safe is it out there for republicans after the health care vote. >> good tuesday evening. in washington, welcome to m t"m daily" the investigation into possible business ties between president trump and russia. it looks like legalized bribery when i comeso getting a visa

in the united states. the two people who are willing to spend $30 million for a guaranteed 18-month stay in washington. we begin with american politics. it is health care. it battered democrats in 2010. it set them ablaze before they passed a bill in the house and this is just a sampling of the scene from town halls in america after health care passed the house. park are we stood up and said the pledge to the united states of america. why should it matter what state i went in? are nobody dies because they don't have access to health care. >> if you are getting your insurance through medicaid. nothing is going to change. >> today the senate's supposed working group on health care, we will get to the supposed in a moment. they work on their version of

legislation after the house passed them the hot potato. aides gave reporters a list in the working group. it came under fire because it doesn't include a single woman. mitch mcconnell's office said no women were being added. hours after meeting with them, mcconnell told reporters that working group, that working group doesn't exist. >> nobody is being excluded based upon gender. >> there are not any women. >> you are not right about what's happening and we are having discussion about the real issues. everybody is at the table. everybody. >> there are no plans to add a woman? >> there is no particular working group. the group that counts, all 52 of us have lunch every day. tuesday, wednesday, and thursday. everybody is at the table. >> folks, the politics of hlth care can be a ticking time bomb for the party in power.

that says it all. surf's up for a wave election. the head winds facing the party look daunting. there is the issue of health care and democratic groups like save my care are targeting house republicans with a borage of a did, s. here's a sampling. >> this congresswoman voted for a repeal bill and voted to raise your costs and cut coverage for billions. show voted yes even though it makes coverage unaffordable to people with preexisting conditions. how could do you this to us? >> there you go. you haven't figured it out, all of those districts were districts that clinton carried

and republicans members hold or trump barely carried. there is the issue of the president, by the way, when it comes to mid-terms. they have the lowest approval ratings in the 30s at least at this point in the citizen. the first mid-term resulted in a loss of house seats except for one. initially it is really hard for one party to maintain full control of government. the bottom line, if this were an ordinary president in an ordinary cycle, there would be reason for republicans to panic. this is not an ordinary president and this is anything but ordinary. cook writes this, the kind of wave that in past decades might

have resulted in a 20 to 30 seat loss. the magic february for democrats is 24. >> wyoming, i guess you are a member of the so-called nonexistent group. he is the republican policy committee chairman. welcome back, sir. >> thanks for having me. >> let's clear up the working group business. is there a health care working group or not? >> there are a lot of groups meeting with the policy committee and we had the discussion. a working group of 52 members of the united states senate, all republicans at lunch where i chaired the discussion for over an hour discussions the health care law. what we are trying to do to help the american people away from this disaster of obamacare. health insurance is not affordable and fewer and fewer companies are willing toell insurance. we have a collapsing market place. we have to do something to help rescue the american people from what is happening with this law right now.

>> so this other working group that was an idea that you guys ditched? >> well, all 52 members are weighing in. you need 50 votes. >> tell me, has it been ditched? you got bad pr and you ditched it. other senators complain they were not involved? >> no. what i'm saying is there are a lot of groups working on this, all republicans will have their say. you have known the senate well enough to know that every voice will be heard and every voice is being heard and all voices were heard from today. we are focused on the issues that have sky rocking premiums because of the health care law. people want to make sure that people with preexisting conditions are opinioning to be able to keep insurance, but we have to do something now to rescue the folks where they realize that obamacare is collapsing. we are seeing it in virginia with companies pulling out and the same happened in tennessee and iowa. it's not just that you go down to one choice like in wyoming

which is very expensive, but in many places you are down to zero choices. no one is selling obamacare insurance. >> you guys going to start from scratch with your own bill, the old fashioned way, you write a bill and you go to conference or are you going to start with the house bill ask amend from there? >> we will put our own bill together. it will accomplish a number of things in the house. we are discussing what is in the house bill and how that applies or doesn't. our focus is on patience and making sure that's the one size fits all of washington is not in the future of health care. different states need to do it differently. what works in wyoming. what works in new york city. >> cassidy collins was the first major senate bill that was introduced. one of the things they said to me when i interviewed them about this, essentially if you like

your obamacare, you are a state that likes it, you get to keep it. is that the goal of your bill here that if you just brought up new york city, if new york likes what they are doing, are you going to have a bill that lets them keep doing what they are doing some. >> that's part of the discussion about what the best way is to repeal and replace a bill that we know is failing the american people and caused skyrocketing costs. even in new york, you have people who are on obamacare and "new york times" has written about it. they can't get care. they have coverage and can't find a doctor who will take care of them. you have people with higher cost and fewer choices and that's the problem. we want to make sure people get care and right now the democrats seem to want to pass the buck. we are trying to pass a bill and we need all of our senators working together to find that. we have a group of all of us as republicans who want to get something pass and get in conference with the house. >> let me ask you a question.

you described what you said is the problem with obamacare. you may get coverage, but don't have access to a doctor. what did you think of the system before obamacare some. >> i was practicing medicine then. i don't say we need something better than obamacare, we need something better than the system at that time. there were all sorts of problems related to it. i'm a doctor that took care of every medicaid patient that came to my office. we had an open policy on patients, but even the mayor clinic said when it comes to making appointments for patients, we reached a tipping point, they said. we have all these medicaid patients and we don't have enough income to pay the doctors and the nurses and the ppl that do the paperwork in terms of salaries and their benefits and retirement. medicaid is not the solution for everyone and neither is medicare. we need to preserve and protect for the seniors and that's not going to be touched in any of

these pieces of legislation. >> let me ask you about preexisting conditions. you said we have a bill that protects people with preexisting conditions to keep the coverage they have. what happens if you lose coverage and coverage gets dropped and you have a preexisting condition? are these folks going to be forced into high risk pools? how will you deal with those? the point of this is to eliminate that bias from insurance. >> as you know under the current law, lots of people don't sign up until they get sick. that's why we are seeing the skyrocketing costs and the collapsing insurance market. only the sick people are signing up because they pay no penalty for not having insurance. we want people to have insurance. >> the mandate. i was going to say -- >> the most unpopular part of obamacare that says everybody has to buy insurance. >> that's the only way to keep cost down.

>> you want to make insurance affordable enough. if you lower the cost of care and insurance is affordable enough, people stay insured. if you read the article in the "new york times" about warren buffett's meeting, he said it is the cost of care that is losing competitiveness in america in terms of money spent on health care and until you get the cost of care down, as a doctor i wille t you we need to get the cost of care down. that is the driving factor. you can get the insurance prices lower and that involves patient responsibility and doing things to stay healthy and being more knowledgeable consumers and shopping around when it comes to the care they get. >> senator, the cost of care, i wod love to spend more time on that because i agree with you. so many tests and paying for all of that. do we overtest? i'm out of time. i know we will get into that as well. thank you for coming on. >> thank you. >> we bring in the panel.

the national editor for the political report. works for mr. cook. democratic strategist, the executive editor for conservative principals. i think we just heard the legislative challenges. go with preexisting conditions. you can't guarantee preexisting conditions because of what he just said. then only sick people sign up. that's what happened. if you want to lower the cost of insurance, you have to figure out how to keep those people out. >> he's a third rail politics. any time the party tried to touch this, go back before obamacare with hillary care. look what happened to democrats in the 94 election after they started to try to work with, reform. there were winners and losers in every one. no party will admit their bill will include losers as well as

winners. the president prepared the country for that. republicans are not preparing the country for that. what we will see with ads like this, they will run over and over again with sick babies with respirators and anxious looking pregnant women and older people. it doesn't matter what is in the bill. those ads are going to run. it doesn't matter what the senate does or anybody does, those are going to run nonstop. >> he said we can't go back to the old system. so then they own thissystem. whether you vote for it, if you are part of the party, you are going to get blamed for it. >> this is the predicament of republicans. if you don't pass anything, the system will continue to rattle. premiums will increase and deductibles will increase and who will they blame?

the people in power. if you do something, the problem is that people are really concerned -- >> deductibles will probably go up. i hate to say it. >> i would disagree with that, but people are concerned about the repeal process. it's going to take a while for premiums to go down. if by november 2018, things have not improved, they will blame republicans. if it's incumbent to engage voters and say remember what happened with obamacare. republicans defined the debate in 2010 and i feel like democrats are defining the debate right now. >> that's right. republicans keep telling everybody that obamacare is a disaster and falling apart, but that's not people's experience with it. if you look at the numbers right now -- >> they don't like the cost. >> no question that more has to be done in terms of controlling

cost. there is no question that the democrats are willing to walk across the aisle and wk with republicans to fix what's wrong with obamacare. everybody acknowledges it could be improved, but the republicans have a pliting ball and it's a political disaster. >> i haven't seen the democrats who can fix obamacare and i think in the end, why obamacare was a huge issue in 2010 when obama lost the house and the senate was the cost. premiums going up. >> chuck is right. republicans framed the conversation and they won seats. republicans framed the conversation after hillary clinton tried it in 1993 and they won seats. democrats are framing the conversation. >> i agree with that. the election is far away, but they are building the crisis. they have to start doing it now. i do think that the biggest concern with obamacare is while yes, a lot of people were

covered that didn't have coverage before, many more started paying higher premiums or deductibles. that's a huge problem and a concern people have. >> before we go and take a break, how about the working group thing. he would admit it. >> it was clear. >> can we walk that back? >> you know who has been the most high profile person in the discussion is senator susan collins. >> i brought it up myself. >> you can't have her saying i have my own group over here. bill cassidy, we are doing our thing. we will let the enjoys do our thing. it had to have impact. >> wt's interesting is pay no attention to whatever weaid two hours ago. >> didn't they release that list? >> pay no attention to the graphic on the screen. i guess that's the way of saying message received. you guys can stick around.

the white house on the defense after the latest russian hearings. committee member richard blumenthal joins me live next. what's the best way to get two servings of veggies? v8 or a fancy juice store? ready, go! hi, juice universe? one large rutabaga, with eggplant... done! that's not fair. glad i had a v8. the original way to fuel your day. start your day with the number one choice of dentists. philips sonicare removes significantly more plaque versus oral-b 7000.

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of the billboard music awards just by using your voice. the billboard music awards. sunday, may 21st eight seven central only on abc. what's going on? oh hey! ♪ that's it? yeah. ♪ everybody two seconds!

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testifying on the hill. something that the director of national intelligence chair james clapper said that might have made the biggest news. >> did you ever find a situation where a trump business interest in russia gave you concern? >> not in the course of the preparation of the community assessment. >> since? >> sorry? >> at all. any time. >> senator graham, i can't comment on that because it impacts the investigation. >> there you have it. trump's business ties appear to be part of the investigation into russia. after that, senator graham today said he wants to lock into the president's business dealings for any russia ties. the white house responded by saying, bring it on. >> he has no business or connections to russia. he welcomes that. in fact he is already changed a

leading law firm in washington, d.c. to send a certified letter to senator graham to that point. he has no connections to russia. >> democratic senator richard blumenthal participated in the hearing. sin t senator, welcome. >> thank you. >> for all of everything we heard about sally yates, she gave voice to news that had been reported. this was a new piece of information that had not been out there that part of the investigation is into the business ties of the trump organization. what do you want to ahave at a hearing that includes who would be at the hearing. eric trump or donald trump jr.? what would that look like? >> that would include anybody what might have knowledge about the trump organization and russian business interests.

that would also interested knowledge of ties between the trump campaign and transition team and administration and russian officials. coming back to the michael flynn potential for black mail, michael flynn was a ticking security time bomb in part because of conversations with the rugs. though ties are under investigation and the reason that director clapper couldn't speak more fully or directly to those issues. >> let me ask you this. everything that you are hearing now on michael flynn, this clearly was a vetting issue on the trump end of things. are you watching all of this and feel as if the justice department should have acted sooner on flynn? >> the white house should have acted more quickly once it knew about this potential risk of black mail. it wasn't only because of those conversations between flynn and the russians, it was also apparently that flynn may well

have lied to the fbi which is a crime. also failed to disclose payments from the russia. receive those payments in violation. flynn faced a ton of legal trouble. >> that's my question. should that have been on alert sooner. in the fall of 16? >> we don't know all yet about what was disclose and when it was disclosed. the national security staff of the department of justice felt at that point, they are responsible for national security issue that is it had to be brought to the white house because at that time flynn was serving in that capacity. what it would raise, president obama fired flynn and warned the president about flynn and apparently also urged him not to hire flynn. that is one piece in the puzzle and bottom line, there needs to

be an independent special prosecutor. that point came across so strongly and today with the president belittling and demeaning this investigation and characterizing it as a charade, how is the deputy general's appointee going to conduct an impartial aggressive investigation when his boss is potentially a target and his boss is the wone who appointed him. >> there are two ways. one would be that the justice department a points a special prosecutor and a resolution empowering a committee like the 9/11 commission. what's the most pragmatic way of doing that if you want an independent investigation? >> i would support both. an independent commission can transparently conduct hearings and produce recommendations and a report made findings. here's the important point about making people pay a price if

they broke the law. only the department of justice. only a special prosecutor can assure that people are held accountable. not only uncover the truth, but hold accountable anyone who colluded and cooperated with the russians and attacking our democratic process and undermining our election system. that requires indictments and no congressional commission, no congressional committee can bring that kind of action. >> the president tweeted about the fact that director clapper said everything the fake media already knows. there is no collusion with russia and trump. he said it to me time on "meet the press" and said it again when he was asked. what should the public take away from the fact that there is no evidence of collusion presented anywhere yet? >> director clapper made clear that he might well have no knowledge. that's the topic of an ongoing

fbi investigation. director comey and his testimony last week indicated that in fact there is an investigation of trump ties to the hacking and attack by the russians. we can't prejudge what the result is, but there is mounting evidence of carter page and roger stone and paul manafort. this needs to be explored and supervised by a special independent prosecutor. >> before i let you go, what's your confidence level in director comey these days? >> he is trying his best. the verdict is still out. i have great confidence in the fbi as an institution. my hope is that a special prosecutor will be appointed because that's the only way to assure a high level confidence in the out come. a prosecution if is warranted. >> you don't trust the senate intel committee? >> i trust them to do their

best, but they can't indict people who should pay a price if they colluded with the russians. it can't produce a fully disclosed report because of the way it operates. it takes classified material. i think either an empty commission or a special prosecutor at the least have to be appointed. >> richard blumenthal, democrat from connecticut. appreciate it. still ahead, relative nightmare. how a kushner family business is reigniting calls to end a controversial visa for sale program. so when i need to book a hotel room, i want someone that makes it easy to find what i want. booking.com gets it. they offer free cancellation, in case i decide to go from kid-friendly to kid-free. now i can start relaxing even before the vacation begins.

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to her husband on a nongovernment, nonclassified computer. how is -- how does that conduct not directly violate that statute? >> if i said that i misspoke. some contained classified information. >> the issue that was he said

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welcome back. president trump's son in law jared kushner's family apologized this week after this headline in the "new york times." kushner family stands to gain from visa rules in trump's first major law. it comes after kushner's sister delivered a sales pitch in beijing urging wealthy chinese investors to join a company venture and fast tracked their own immigration to the united states.

the visas in question are called eb 5 and also known as the golden visa. they come under fire in the past from lawmakers on both sides, but the program was extended last week buried in the funding bill that was signed by the president on friday. what is an eb 5 visa? they go to foreign developer who is invest $500,000 in the u.s. they are put on a fast track to get a green card. guess what. only about 10,000 are handed out every year. these visas are totally legal. it's not the first time a political figure ended up in hot water. the governorf virginia used them for a company he invested in with haley barber. it was a huge scandal in south dakota that engulfed a mess leading to somebody's suicide.

joining me now is richard painter under george w. bush and ethics in washington known as crew who is suing the president for violating the e moll umts clause of the constitution. let me start with eb-5 and the visas. it's a perfectly legal program. it seems the most corruptible program that the federal government has come up with where you can sell visas. >> yes. that's the problem. bribery is the exchange of money in return for official action from the united states government. what we have is a program where money is being exchanged for a visa. the program is only legal if there is no favoritism towards anyone who invests in a project that is favored by a campaign

contributor or a family of a united states government official. what the kushner family did fell just short of soliciting where they are suggesting if you invest in their program and their projects, you will get the visa. the clear implication was that you are more likely to get the visa by investing with them as opposed to other programs, other projects that qualify. >> the reason i ask about the program in general before i get to the kushner involvement and how close to the president and all of that, i guess the very idea of this program, you just described and had a definition of bribery. how is this not legalized bribery? >> it is only legal if there is no discrimination amongst the different investments based on how close they are to the united states government officials making the decisions. if the money goes into it -- >> we are still selling a visa.

i mean, hard stop. >> i find it very proper attic, but if you get the visa and invest in our country, $500,000, you sure should never allow anyone to suggest that if you invest that money in a business run by the cub mer kushner or t families, that is bribery and it is criminal. >> this walked up to the line, but did it cross it or not? >> the press was kicked out of the room so we don't know what the facts are. they mentioned jared kushner by name and the fact that he is in the administration and put a picture of the president of the united states up on the screen. some event organizer put the picture of the president up on the screen. that's rubbish. they know full well what they

are putting in their presentation. they used the name of the president and jared kushner's name to so lilicit money for th family. >> how do you get legally right here. if jared kushner came to you and said i want your advice. me how to do this. what would you tell him? >> the first thing is exclude the kushner family and businesses from this program. there should be none of these visas given to their investors. anybody who creates the impression that there will be favoritism towards their business whether because of campaign contributions or because they are with a family of a high ranking government official, they should never be allowed to participate. that's the first thing and second i think jared kushner and ivanka need to recuse from the china matters in the white house. >> let me ask you about the part about the family. at what point, is it ever a

point where that is unfair to an individual who happens to have the last name of someone in the family or doesn't believe they have any ties? how do you protect a citizen to do business? what is the line there that protects somebody who happens to have kushner's last name. is a cousin or maybe in real estate. is there just -- they have to suck it up and deal with it? >> they had no need to mention jared kushner's name and put president trump up on the screen. he doesn't make decisions or shouldn't be making decisions about which specific companies investors get those visas. those decisions are made by career employees at the state department or should be. they created the impression that there would be favoritism in the projects. that was wrong. they could have handled this much more effectively and teamed

and trying to attract investors and explain the program and discussed their own specific companies. they did not do it the right way and they knew what they were doing. it was wrong. >> they did it at the best you can say with a link. let me ask you this. what law -- in this case, this would not be a violation of the e moll umts clause. this was involving kushner? >> there was no money coming in and it was not foreign government money. it covers the kushners as well as trp. everyone in the government and the foreign government money from being transferred to the government officials and benefits from the foreign government. this is one of many, many incidents. >> would this fall under the foreign corruption act that goes under their? what would it fall under?

>> they are falling under the bribery aspect. if you invest in the kushner business, you are more likely to get the visa because of the influence of the curb near family in the white house that. is solicitation of a bribe. >> that are gets to the matter of where i started. it seems like the entire program is a corruptible program. even when it's run supposedly on the up and up. richard painter, as always, thank you for your time. >> how much would you pay for a seat if that seat were in the house of representatives? we'll be right back with the answer.

breaking news. jim comey is out at the fbi. essentially a firing the president asked and received the recommendation of his resignation. he asked for it. it was a recommendation we are being tolby the attorney general, jeff sessions. this is not somebody who had a lot of political capital on either side, but wow, what a move by president trump a day after he testifies on capital hill he fires the director of the fbi who is leading an investigation into the president's campaign. let me bring the panel in and pete williams is working on the story. the white house team we will see from them. amy, steve, alfonso.

wow. >> i wouldn't have been that surprised had he done this in his first few days in office. clean slate and let's start from scratch. between the testimony from sally yates and the push back from the white house on that and the acknowledge by clapper yesterday that he didn't know that the fbi was doing their own investigation ask he can't make comments about collusion between the trump team and russia. that make this is a much more difficult sell. >> the president keeps tweeting that there is nothing going on. there is no collusion, but everything he does suggests otherwise. this is going to be the moment that everybody says there must be something there. it must be investigated. he got himself an independent council. >> i don't know about that. the optics are terrible. i agree with amy. he should have removed him from the beginning, but at the beginning of his administration, he seemed to show confidence in

comey. >> let me go to the white house. this came from sean spicer. what more can you tell us, peter? >> reporter: let me give you the information we have. i am joining your conversation in progress. excuse me if i repeat. spicer said the president informed comey he has been terminate and removed from office. he was based on the clear recommendations on the deputy attorney general as well as the attorney general jeff sessions. the president in a statement said the fbi is of the most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for the crown jewel of law enforcement from the statement. a search for a new permanent fbi director will begin immediately. we have been given this letter written to director comey from the president, donald trump. it's essential that we find new leadership that restores public trust and confidence in his law

enforcement mission. he said i wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. >> stick around here for a minute. let me bring in pete williams and grab him on the fbi is pet williams's beat. pete, we knew director comey didn't have a lot of political capital with democrats or republicans these days for different reasons. but the timing of this is probably the most shocking aspect. did the director see this coming? >> well, if he did, none of his senior staff did. i just got off the phone with the senior fbi official who says he had no idea this was coming. they are in shock there. i asked where the fbi director is, whether he's in his office today, and i was told that he's not there now, but this person didn't say where the fbi director is. we don't know what the reason for this is. the assumption here is this is because of the handling of the disclosures during the campaign last year regarding hillary

clinton. and the fact that it's a recommendation by both the attorney general and the deputy attorney general is what takes some of the pressure off the white house here because if obviously if the president had done this on his own while the fbi has publicly said that it's investigating any connections between the trump campaign and the russians and the influence in the election last year, that would have been an extremely volatile thing to do. but because of the fact that it had the recommendation of the new attorney general, jeff sessions who is recused from that -- >> hang on, peter. >> reporter: and just became the deputy attorney general reese lently confirmed and has a bipartisan background, served under president obama and other republican presidents, that takes some pressure off the white house for what undoubtedly

would have been a huge backwash. >> pete, i have to play news. ping-pong, peter alexander, you have a quick update. go, peter. >> we're reading through this cold. there is more from the letter i read to you. this is the letter written from president trump to director comey date marked today, may 9th. there is another paragraph in there that i'm just reading that i want to schaeffer because i think it gives more clarity about the reasoning behind this decision. it says from trump to comey, while i greatly appreciate you informing me on three separate occasions that i am not under investigation, i nevertheless concur with the judgment of the department of justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau. so, he uses this opportunity, of course, to try to clear his own name while suggesting that james comey is not in any position that he can lead that agency. >> a very important piece of information there. pete, obviously that is the president trying to, hope he's trying to i guess dee politicize the decision which will probably be an impossible thing for him to do. >> right, that's going to be the

big question here. you know, the director had just testified last week about the actions he took that were so controversial involving release of information about the hillary clinton e-mail investigations. before that, the fbi director james comey's tenure in the job had gotten high marks from members of both parties. his handling of several high-profile investigations, his public willingness to discuss these issues of going dark, the inability of the fbi to tractori track terrorist conversations. then claim the clinton e-mail investigation and his testimony last week didn't satisfy members of either party. the democrats were upset with what he said about the hillary clinton investigation so late in the process. >> right. >> and didn't say about donald trump. the republicans were upset that he didn't ever file -- he

recommended against filing charges against hillary clinton. so, that has been the thing that has been hanging around his neck here ever since the election last year, and presumably that's the reason. >> you know, pete, it's clear to me that director comey has taken -- is probably more involved, at least in the comings and goings of this russian investigation than perhaps a director normally would be because of the intense scrutiny there is. but where is this investigation being conducted? what entity inside the fbi is taking the lead on this, if you could walk us through that? >> sure. it's the fbi's counter-espionage or counter-intelligence unit. they're the ones who keep track of the spies. and because the allegation here is that the russian government was using its intelligence apparatus to affect the american election, that's where this investigation has been all along. now, it's helped out by its cyber division because this

involved election hacking, but there was a person from the counter terrorism division in charge of this investigation who reported to comey. comey would have reported to the attorney general, but now this meanthe new deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein, who just got confirmed, is even more important. >> pete williams, you've got a lot of people who want a piece of you for a lot of television. so, i will let you go. thank you, sir. peter alexander, if you're still there, i'd like to know if the white house has started, i guess, trying to spin how this doesn't look like the president's upset about the russia investigation. >> reporter: even as i speak to you now, my colleague halle jackson is speaking to sean spicer. let me give you some back story how this went down. frankly in the last 45 minutes or so one of our colleagues was up in sean spicer's office for a logistics meeting, a conversation that was supposed to take place there when reince

priebus walked in the room and basically cleared everybody out of sean's office. the main door they ask you to exit, they asked them to go out a separate door and said we'd have news for you. in 30 minutes we'll ask you to come back up here. that news would break 6:15. a half hour shy that of mark we got this breaking news. this is something none of us expected today. you know what was striking, though, chuck, more of the babbling storback story, a lot of the focus was not so much about james comey as it was about policies related to afghanistan, michael flynn, but on this topic specifically there was a striking moment when sean spicer was asked about james comey and asked specifically if he still -- if the president still has full confidence in him. and sean said, basically in effect after sort of fumbling his way through it, i can't speak on behalf of the president. i haven't spoken to him on this specifically since the last time i addressed this question. which seemed to offer some gap in there that made it clear something was going on today

which ultimately led to what we now know is the dismissal of the fbi director. >> all right, pete alexander, i know you have other demands, too. i will let you go. >> thank you. >> i want to talk to the folks here. okay, you guys have gotten a little bit of this information. with no heads up other than i've been asking senators this, i asked senator blumenthal earlier in the show, you guys heard it, about his confidence level in director comey. this is a democrat, no fan of donald trump, and he would only have confidence in the bureau. he would not have confidence in comey. so, one could think on one hand, amy, this could satisfy everybody. on the other hand, this feels like good luck getting a replacement confirmed in this environment. >> in this environment. just looking at the twitters -- >> never a great idea. good luck with that. >> but seeing a former obama campaign handwriting, i've never had such mixed emotions about anything ever. and i think that kind of tells you everything about where we

sit on this politically. >> so, even though he doesn't have a lot of fans on either side of the aisl you'r absolutely right. the optics of this are absolutely horrible and trying to suggest jeff sessions convinced donald trump to do this is absolutely laughable. i said it a moment ago and i'll put money on it today. this will get him an independent counsel. this will get republicans on that side of the aisle. >> alphonso, lindsey graham, john mccain, there will be a section of republicans in the senate that may start flirting with it. >> there will be pressure for that. i don't know if we're going to get there. but the problem, again, is the optics. again, we haven't seen any evidence of collusion between the trump campaign and the russians. >> we've seen a lot of evidence. >> but the problem here is the optics. you're creating an issue again by firing comey when we're in the middle of an investigation. >> you've got to give the president credit in this respect. this is something you would think you would push off on somebody else. he's owning this, to write the

firing letter yourself and sign it, he had no problem owning this one. >> he's owning it in a sense, but the white house is already spinning that it wasn't him. i don't know how you own it and not own it at the same time. >> he signed the letter, he owns it. >> i think he owns it, too. he was it was jeff sessions -- >> well respected -- >> notice they led with the deputy a.g. here because he is the one with the more credibility on the democratic side of the aisle. >> right. if you're also republican right now, you're thinking, okay, good, maybe we can talk about the fbi right now instead of talking about my town hall meetings and health care. so, you have to wonder which one you would rather be dealing with. >> how about this. fbi director, lindsey graham. >> he'd be confirmed. he would get confirmed. >> he would get confirmed. >> he would get confirmed -- >> could you imagine? i can't see the president excited about putting -- >> call in a second and say how dare you mentioned that name. >> john mccain, too. >> i half kid here. the question is, look, it is

inresting. james comey was not a member of the fbi when he headed the fbi. my guess is somebody in -- you're going to want a careerist because you're going to want somebody with no political background at all. they're going to have to be searching for a careerist here. >> absolutely, i agree. he's got a huge problem in his hands in terms of perception. and i just don't know why he is doing this at this time. and it's hard to figure out trump. it will be interesting to find out when he got the recommendation from sessions to remove comey. >> or did he ask for the recommendation? >> he asked for the recommendation. was it a visceral reaction after last week's testimony? if the recommendation came weeks ago, then it wasn't. so -- >> it's clear to me that the president has felt comfortable that he's gotten enough complaints that he believes he has enough cover here. that's the impression i've gotten when this topic has been talked about. >> it's very hard also. the attorney general who has recused