testifying on thursday. the president is going to have a busy day and asked whether or not the president has confidence in his attorney general. after the tweets he sent out about the doj and he said that he does. you will hear a lot more about that briefing with my friend ali who specks itp w. it is all yours. >> tha you, katie. have yrself a g ternoon. thanks for watching this hour of msnbc. we have a rlot to cover. a number of questions and comments from sean spicer about the president including a response to a question asked about the mayor of london saying that the president should cancel plans to come to the united kingdom. the president thanks her majesty for her gracious invitation. they asked about whether or not republican senators might try to pass a health care bill just to say they did.

they are talking about repealing and replacing obamacare. >> there were a couple of highlights of what we just heard. number one was sean spicer not saying whether the president had confidence in his attorney general amid the report indicating that perhaps there was unease on the part of the president. the press secretary said he had not had that conversation with the president himself. one of the last times that that statement came out. you have news about the president's tweets. what this mean when is it comes to james comey testimony, sean spicer said the president is the

most effective messenger. the president wants to be conveying and talking about his own message wn he is faced with qstio about whether it's the russia investigation or anything else. i would also highlight the discussion surrounding qatar. that tweet came out and was o r overshadow overshadowed, but he avoided the questions when it came to what this meant with the relationship moving forward. choosing to focus on funding for terrorism. that's with the president in ri add and policies into place. i do think, again, notably short briefing from sean spicer. that's become the norm. i will try to look at my watch. you have members of congress coming in. health care and tax reform, etc. another big topic of conversation. that said, there are real questions about the timeline. you heard sean spicer say listen, their focus, they want

to get it done and there are real questions from republicans as to whether that's actually realistic. sean spicer wrapped up given that reporters can go out and figure out what's happening with the members of congress just arriving here. that's where i should probably go over. >> you have done the work. i know you have other stuff to do and you are always here for us. our chief white house correspondent, we will pick up on the themes we have been talking about. and president trump should be sitting down with house and senate leadership at any moment at the white house to discuss repealing and replacing obamacare and discussing tax cuts that the president makes any remarks, we will bring them as soon as we get them. the mood of the meeting is likely to be tense. thpresident wants a major gislativ accomplishment as the russia investigati and james comey's upcoming testimony on thursday are dominating the news cycle. according to a number of reports, the senators themselves

say the chances of repealing obamacare are not looking good. here's what the republican senator who is leading the russia investigation is saying about the repeal. >> it's unlikely that we will get a health care deal. dead-on arrival. >> that's not a good point. >> it's also not a good plan. >> the president will not be happy about that. >> no, but we have shared branches of government. we do the legislating and at the end of the day, this is too important to get wrong. >> do you predict by the end of the year there will be something out of the senate? >> i don't see a comprehensive plan this year. >> there you have it. lindsey graham asked if he was worried that a bill wouldn't be passed this year. here's what he said. i don't think there will be. i just don't think we can pull it together among ourselves. senator susan collins of maine said just listening to the

debate, i think cobbling together a bill is going to be a challenge, but you never know. i love it when they keep the door open. one republican is more optimistic. senator john corn in of texas said by july at the latest. new reporting from politico suggests that republican leaders could bring up a bill they know is going to fail in order to end the health care debate and move on to other issues like tax reform. by the way, it hasot taken the form of a bl either. it's just a proposal. let's go to dan diamond. the victory was held on may 4th and many people thought it was premature. this is not likely to get through the senate. has the mood since that afternoon where they were swiling beer in the white house lawn changed when it comes to repealing obamacare?

>> the reports that you just said speak to this. this is open pessimism that they have the votes for their package. i will say in march and april, the house said the same thing until at the end of the day they did have the votes and push the bill through. >> let's just explore that for a second. there is a difference. there was a way to get the right number of the votes in the house. it meant selling one's grandmother to the devil in order to make all the cuts to medicate and get the freedom caucus on board. it's not clear that there is anything you can do to get enough republican senators on board. >> that's one reason why they say they are starting over. whether they start with something fresh or come up with a bill that resembles would pass through the house, that's unclear. one of the biggest issues they are wrestling over is medicaid. how significantly should the program be cut? some senators from west virginia

say they won't sign on to a bill if there are medicate cuts at all. that could be a deal breaker, but at the same time these republicans have spent seven years making promises to their base that they were going to repeal the aca at the first opportunity. even if it's bad or will be impacts on their constituents they may not want. there is fear if they don't move forward, they will pay the price at the polls. >> i heard it described as showing the body. they show that they tried to get a bill and it didn't work. we have to move on to other things. >> that may be what we end up with. mitch mcconnell said he has so many legislative priorities that if the senate wrestles with health care, that is a failure. that's why they are came aiming for a framework at the end of the week and why they want a vote at the end of june. there can be a major gap and

right now there are more than a dozen or half dozen senators who are nervous about voting for the bill. >> good to talk to you and thank you for your reporting. i want to bring in scott taylor of virginia who voted for the latest version of the republican health care plan in the house. a lot of us were saying when everybody was celebrating on that day, there is too much space between that bill and what the senate needs to pass. was that going through your mind on that day? were you happy to have a bill? >> i was not at the celebration you were speaking at. the senate, i'm not going to try to envision what they will put forth or do, but i am optimistic they will put something forth and vote on it. i do think that's going to happen. >> all right. i guess the problem is they might put something forward. it's n going to resemble the compromise necessary to get the

freedom caucus. we can surmise. a lot of these republicans like the ones that i just quoted from said they can't live with the medicaid cuts and the especially benefits. aren't you worried they will come up with something that can't pass. >> i don't want to go back and forth on this. we have done that before. >> let's be fair. they are there and they can get out of it. >> we have talked about this. they have to have a plan. >> real easy to get that waiver, right? you have to write a letter to the department of health and human services. >> you have to have a plan in place. we have different interpretations. >> you can get it just for asking. >> i don't think so. i don't know what they will put forth. you have been reporting on what my colleagues have said and what they will and won't do. we will see what happens. it's up to them to do that now.

i am optimistic. they will vote for something. >> part of the discussion here in the senate is that if we can get this done and get past it one way or the other with or without a bill and put health care behind us, we can move to tax reform. you and i have talked since the proposal came out, it's not a tax reform bill. there is no actual bill and no meat on them bones at all. what are you thinking needs to happen to have tax reform? >> for me personally, there needs to be three things. number one, you have to get tax rates down for working families. that's where i come from. i'm from the eastern shore. we didn't come from money. that helps our families that have been taxed more than ever in the history of this nation. you have to get the corporate rates down to make us competitive and do something as well as llcs. what's important is the

repatriation of the funds overseas. i want to see something on each point and we can do that, i'm optimistic that we will do tax reform as well. i'm not sure of the timeline and there are a lot of people working hard on both sides and the white house as well. while i haven't seen a bill, no meat on the bones. >> you and i like to see bills. we like to argue specifics. the reason i like having ow my show is you like to drill down on something and talk about it. that's my frustration with tax reform. there is no bill. there was a thing on a piece of paper with aspirations as i like to call them. we can argue, talk, negotiate. whatever you want. >> it's coming. i will be happy to talk details. >> you are a man of your word. scott taylor of virginia. a friend of our show. europe is on the edge right now. from the manchester terror

attack, an incident in paris. police shot a man after he pulled a hammer from his backpack and tried to attack an officer outside notre dame. he shouted this is for isil. several hundred people were inside when the incident occurred. kelly joins me with the latest. you have been covering this since the minute it happened. what do we know now? >> the paris prosecutor is investigating this as a possible terror attack, but they won't go all the way there yet. they are looking at it as terrorism and where it happened. in front of the notre dame cathedral, the iconic spot in paris visited by so many tour t tourists every day and because the target was a police officer. we know that police officers have been targeted in the past in paris. there was an attack in april that left one officer dead and two seriously wounded. an attacker opened fire on them.

at this point the only hint of a motive is the attacker's own words saying this is for syria. that's according to france's interior minster. the interior minster said that they are trying to confirm an identity on this guy. he may be an algerian student. they are not sure if that id card is real. they are not sure it's his. roads were closed. then we started to get the details of what happened and the minster saying that the man approached the three officers from behind. he pulled a hammer from his

backpack and hit know in the upper in the head. the officers's injies are not seriou a fellow officer shot the suspect. a lot of details still to come. the investigation is ongoing. >> thanks for the reporting you have been giving us. staying on the star for us. i want to bring in a former fbi agent and msnbc contributor. we are trying to parse when we were covering this earlier. there were a number of people saying you are speculating. no one claimed responsibility for us. i think it's crucial. you and i have been together two days talking about attacks of this nature. to understand that the focus doesn't need to be on organizations like isis and al qaeda and others. there is a philosophy and not a physical territory that these

people inhabit. it's harder to fight. >> it's important to separate the moment it happens until now. it's not the place that you want to be. you look at intelligence and the shift, it's intelligence driven pleeszing and you talk about lone wolfs and groups, we want to build a profile like one would do at the stock market that will show a trend and a pattern. that pattern if it can be quantified can be detected. 's the proactive part.

they designed themselves as a cult. they believe there is a fight coming. this is a philosophy to find and combat. >> as i said, al qaeda and isis just like we have a profile. they want to say they are susceptible to this brain washing. that is something that is important to understand and as you said, it does perpetrate and mask itself on this religious philosophy and prey on

socioeconomic disparity. there are concepts, but at the end of the day, it seeks to propagate the message which is at the core to perpetuate fear. >> good to talk to you. we will talk about something good. joining me now. turning to new developments in the manchester terror attack. authorities identified the 30 attacker. a 22-year-old of italian and moroccan decent. he along with two others drove a van. this is not manchester, but the london attacks. they drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians on the london bridge saturday, killing seven people before launching a stabbing spree in bars and restaurants nearby. mn more than two dozen people remain hospitalized. senators grill betsy devos for cuts to funding on higher education. we will have more on that. come

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president trump's education secretary was grilled by senators on capitol hill on education cuts in president trump's proposed budget. they aim to cut funding by about $9 billion. 13% of the entire department's funding. it's a good thing that public education is in hand and we don't need more money. tammy baldwin asked about cuts

to financial aid programs for higher education. >> how do these truly draconian cuts in federal -- reached to more and more young people? >> the budget really seeks to make college and higher ed more flexible for students. >> tried to make sense of that with some of my team and w couldn't. i want to bringn the senator herself, tammy baldwin of wisconsin who joins me. thanks for being with me. you took on three particular issues when it comes to funding for higher education. you talked about perkins loans and the federal work study program and the supplemental education student grant. what's the point you are trying to make to the secretary? >> students are increasingly

carrying financial burdens to get a higher education. whether that's at a technical college or a university. when i asked the secretary about the massive cuts in loan programs and grant programs, even in loan forgiveness programs, her answer was that the cuts resulted in more flexibility. how can fewer choices be more flexible? in any event, it's deeply disturbing to me. people in wisconsin just want to get ahead and be able to secure the education they need for a good paying job that supports a family. this budget is devastating to that goal and appears to be without vision on the part of trump and devos. >> for makes it more flexible in the same way taking away health care does. we are listening to the president having a meeting with the gop leaders in the white

house. hang on and we will talk on the other side. >> it's wonderful to be here this afternoon with the republican leadership house and senate including speaker ryan, leader mcconnell, leader mccarthy ands senator cornyn. since the election we achieved incredible gains for the american people. we added more than one million new jobs and it's going up very fast. you see the new reports coming out. going up very, very fast. approved a historic increase in military spending. we have increased the stock market values and values of corporations on the public markets by $3.4 trillion since november 8th. i signed 36 bills into law and repealed one job crushing regulation after another. in fact, the house and senate

sent a record number of resolutions that eliminate regulations to my desk for signature, saving our economy many billions of dollars annually and in fact based on the numbers we just got, the actual number is approximately $18 billion we saved annually with all of the bills that i signed. that's a great job. great job mitch and everybody. together we will fight for promise measures on the border and we have fought very successfully. we have tough policies to keep deadly drugs and the vicious gangs out of the country. ms 13 is being taken care of at a very, very rapid clip by general, now secretary kelly. has done an incredible job. we are down reduction on people pouring through the border down 78% as of now. it used to be if you got down 1%

was a good job. we are down 78% before we have the wall. the wall will be a great help and it will help. believe me. we are working with congress to rebuild the infrastructure. we will discuss that in great depth next week with gary and mike pence and everybody else and to pass a massive tax cut, the biggest in our country's history if it's passed the way we want. it will be the biggest tax cut in history and spur businesslike never before. at the core of the agenda is repealing and replacing the disaster known as obamacare. average obamacare premiums have more than doubled from 2013 to 2017. including an increase of 203% in alaska. wow. that's a new one. i always use arizona. at 116.

i got stuck at 116. now we are at 203. that's big. 123 in louisiana. these are the new numbers. after a year of talking about 116% in arizona, you will be happy to know we have new numbers. and 176% in north carolina. a great state. insurance carriers are fleeing and leaving many americans with only one insurer or even no insurers to choose from and that's happening in numerous states and just this afternoon we learned the last statewide insurer in the great state of ohio is leaving. so they don'tave any insurers. that means another 20 counts in the state of ohio will have no health care plan. if congress doesn't act to save americans from this democrat-inflicted catastrophe, next year is only get to get

worse. a lot worse. i don't know how it can get worse than 203%, but i'm sure the democrats will find a way. almost every insurer pulled out for 2018. the house took an important first step to rescue americans from this calamity when paul, you and your group and everybody passed the american health care act. that was a very, very long and difficult negotiation. it really gives a great print and a great concept to mitch and now the senate i'm sure will follow suit and get a bill across the finish line this summer that will be great health care for americans and i'm looking forward to seeing it. so looking forward to seeing it. we are working very hard on massive tax cuts and working very, very hard on the health care. we will have pleasant surprises

for a lot of people. i would like to thank the leadership for being with us. mike pence, you have been great. i appreciate you being here. steve, great. i appreciate jared. jared is much more famous than me. i'm a little bit upset about that. i want to thank everybody very much and let's get to work. we will get it done. thank you all very much. >> what message do you have for james comey ahead of his testimony? >> i wish him luck. thank you all very much. >> i wish him luck, president trump says about jim comey who we are expecting to hear from on thursday. the president jokingly said jared kushner is more famous than he is. he made a claim when he announced pulling out of the paris climate accords that we created a million jobs. i am skeptical about presidents

taking credit for job creation. the number is 600,000. i don't know why where this comes from. he saved $18 billion. not sure where he got that. he is very into his numbers and likes to say them. we were talking about other numbers before we went to that. i was talking with senator tammy baldwin of wisconsin about cuts. let's talk numbers to the education budget that are going to affect the ability for students to get an education higher than high school. during the campaign, there were talks about free and no tuition. i take issue because somebody pays for something somewhere. you were not concentrating on that. you were talking about the grants and loans that students can get. the perkins loans or a work sthad is not a money give away or the supplemental education grants. you are talking about an array of things.

in order to get a higher education. >> absolutely. a number of the programs are campus-based programings that allow campuse extra flexibility to help a student in dire need. maybe preventing them from dropping out. there is all sorts of reasons why all these decisions shouldn't be centralized in washington, d.c. it ought to be on campus. one of the ones that i didn't get a chance to talk as much about with the secretary as i would have liked, one that i feel is a broken promise. loan forgiveness programs for people who pledge to work in public service for a long period of time. that's a promise they even made. pulling the rug out from people. this is not the direction we want to go in, especially when we know how key education beyond high school can be in our advanced manufacturing economy and the state like wisconsin

where we make things. this is essential for people to be able to get ahead. >> let me ask you this. when talking to the education secretary, i don't think she chose to have her budget cut by 13%. how do we square this? a lot of people don't think the budget for the education department should be cut and now they have to make cuts. >> i don't know how you square it at all. we have a president who campaigned on working class issues and education is key to being able to break a trap of stagnant wages and get ahead. then a budget that couldelp fulfill that proses inste crafted in a way that i think pulls the rug out from under working people in this country and people who aspire to be able to get ahead for their families.

this is a real disappointment. a lot of the answers we were getting in the committee were completely nonresponsive, as you showed a clip earlier. there is no vision from this administration and certainly from this education secretary. >> thank you for your patience and sticking around while we played what was going on at the white house. i know you have scheduling reasons to go, but i would like to have a longer conversation with you. we will continue. democratic senator tammy baldwin of wisconsin. up next, we are counting down the days to the testimony heard around the world and james comey breaks his silence and testifies about the investigation into possible collusion between russia and the trump campaign. we are building new airports all across the state. new roads and bridges. new mass transit.

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anyone can dream. making it a reality is the hard part. northrop grumman command and control systems always let you see the complete picture. and we're looking for a few dreamers to join us. okay. this is poised to be one of the biggest political events in modern political history. it's happening in two days. the former fbi director, the fired director james comey will tell the world by way of congress what the president asked of him when it came to the russia investigation. with all that you think the white house would have a war room assembled, a team to contain fallout from damaging testimony, but multiple people familiar with the planning for thursday told us that that idea never quite took off. to make thursday even more dramatic, political analyst and

"washington post" reporter just in the last two hours, the president may -- i'm not making this up. live tweet the proceedings if he feels the need to respond. joining me from where it all happens. capitol hill. i never thought in my life that is at least double as long as your life that i would say those words. the president would be live tweeting. the "houston chronicle" live tweets. you might live tweet and i might. what is this about? >> well, clearly we have a president who is breaking the mold in a way that i have to tell you even makes many of the people who are going to be questioning jim comey tomorrow uncomfortable. this is the private meeting room outside of the hearing room where all of this will take place. senate heart 216. they are meeting behind closed doors to in part talk through some of what might go on

thursday morning when all of this unfolds with jim comey, the fbi director. some of the members spoke directly to jim comey and chairman richard burr said yesterday he had spoken to combo saturday. comey was going to have free reign to talk about anything he wanted to according to the special council whose permission comey needed toom up here and open the floodgates for all of this. they are starting to review documents from michael michael flynn's entities.

it's not clear if he fully complied with the subpoenas, they are still kind of getting their hands on what has been turned over. the domestic focus is on the president's tweets. can you discuss this. >> i can only say what i have said before. i'm not a fan of the president's tweets. that still remains my view. >> mitch mcconnell, the optimist. >> i have been meaning to ask you. your twitter handle is@casey. did you get that on the first

day twitter was around. i've been trying to get@ali. >> in fairness, that's two letters shorter. at's even harder to obtain. i have been on twitter way too long. >> giving me the benefit of the doubt. we have been tomorrowed to make this issue about leaks and not about hacks. 25-year-old reality leigh winner is accused of accepting classified material to an online publication. a senior federal law official confirmed to nbc news she is accused of leaking the document to the intercept, an online journalistic enterprise. here's why it's a sensitive piece of material. it raises the possibility from the likelihood that russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system. it does not suggest that any votes were changed.

she said she has no prior criminal history. i want to bring in the security analyst and foreign policy contributor, a former senior adviser to the supreme commander in europe. we have all seen this information. >> and they didn't succeed. >> exactly. supposed 3. this is why we need an investigation of the full gambit of what russia did. the quick one. one of the things i would like to kw from comey is whether he n give us a hint of how long

it will take the fuller investigation and how much he is going into all of these things. exactly what the russians did. this is talking about having to do with the election system. >> if you recall back when the intelligence community put out their report and said unequivocally with high confidence he ordered an operation against the 2016 presidential elections, they said at the time i think even in the document that they couldn't talk about what the effect was. i think if the russians did manage to get into some of these

computer systems especially in the critical states, there was west virginia and virginia and i believe indiana. i'm not sure what the states were. i want to know what impact it might have had. >> we will be digging into this more. evelyn is the former senior adviser to the commander in europe at msnbc and national security analyst. up next, trump has a hiring slump. why he is failing at fillings that are crucial to the fight against terror.

>> in the wake of the london attack, the president is trying to drum up support for his travel ban. the positions in the trump administrations that are crucial to keeping america safe. let's have a look at these positions. start with the on the top. the fbi director, the president fired the fbi director without knowing who will replace him. hoo has been four weeks since james comey was fired. the head of the tsa is also

vacant the deputy secretary of state, we don't have one of these. these are people that are serving in these roles, but they have not been named. it's number two person, the deputy secretary to rex tillerson, an understaffed department that is really, really important. the solicitor general also. what about ambassadors? these are all the ones we do not have. the president only nominated 11. six, awaiting confirmaon. 60 remain. the adviser for the trump transition on hiring is the president's ceo of partnership for public service. daniel benjamin is at large and coordinator for counter terrorism and director of the

john sloan dickey center and dartmouth college. thank you for being here. let me start with you. the state department. in our world today in 2017, one could argue that there is nothing more important in the world than diplomacy. and one could argue, with this president, it's increasingly important, and yet at the highest levels, except for the secretary, there are big vacancies at the state department. does this worry you? >> well, it worries me tremendously, if you didn't have information to the contrary, you could think that the president was trying to destroy the state department, because frankly, to have one undersecretary of state and no assistant secretaries, i think there are two out of something like 25 or 26, assistant secretaries who have been confirmed by the senate. it's scandalous. and, you know, people can make the trains run every day, but there's no way to think about

policy and there's no one who's really empowered to make real changes. >> it's not a train -- it's not a train-running department, actually. it's one of those things about long-term thinking, about intelligence gathering, about analysis. it's not just a place where things get done. max, let me ask you. you were involved in advising the trump administration on this transition. max, what did you do wrong? >> it's a long list that i did wrong. but the basicnt ishe right one, which is you can't run the government effectively only through the white house. it's a very large, complex, and responsible for a lot of different functions that are vital to the american public, including national security and if you don't have your team on the field, you can't run it effectively. you can't deal with the inevitable crisis. and you can't actually pursue your agenda effectively. i do need to correct one small point. there is, in fact, a deputy secretary at state. john sullivan, who's filling both the policy and the management roles, which makes a

lot of sense. he's actually the kind of deputy we need. he served previously as the deputy at the commerce department and the bush administration. but he is the exception, not the rule. there are only 39 senate-confirmed people across the entire government. there are 1100 senate-confirmed position. >> and in the case you mentioned, it's an acting -- >> no, he is actually, in fact, confirmed. and he is a trump appointee who's senate confirmed. so he's exactly what we need in the other jobs. you're right that across the board, there are gasp everywhere and it's also true that even when you don't have a senate-confirmed person, you have someone in an acting role, and daniel's correct that they're like the substitute teacher. they can't really do the job in the way that it needs to be done. but just in that specific instance, there happens to be someone who is one of the 39 out of the 1100 that's actually quite capable. >> all right, fair enough. point taken. daniel, clearly the people in the national security establishment and the state, the

diplomatic establishment, know this is a problem. the people who are on the inside know that their departments cat run without these people. is the administration hearing this? are the people at the highest levels getting in the president's ear and saying, we really have to make this a priority. >> well, i think secretary tillerson has fallen down on the job here and isn't pushing hard against the white house and telling them that it has to be done. and there's no one else who has the authority to do this. you know, the undersecretary -- i mean, there's almost no one home. and you know, we go back to that famous statement from steve bannon about destroying or deconstructing the administrative state. if this is what deconstructing the administrative state is about, then it's suicidal for our country. it's just not acceptable. >> all right. guys, thanks very much for the conversation. it's made us a little bit smarter about this. max steyer and daniel benjamin.

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all right. happening now, a mass casualty incident is being reported out of georgia right now. at least four people are dead, dozens are in the hospital. all because of the opioid crisis. it's in bibb county, which is in central georgia. t"the atlanta journal-constitution" says more than a dozen overdoses have been reported so far in the past two days and they fear the numbers could go up. this is a story we're staying very close to here at msnbc. my colleague, chris hayes, has

really gotten himself into this story in a big way. and we have another big development in a story we told you about yesterday. after saudi arabia, egypt, bahrain, the united arab emirates and yemen said monday they were breaking diplomatic relations with qatar, a top iranian official now says iran could send food shipments to qatar by ship. for more, i want to bring in my colleague, ali arouzi. he's written a great article on msnbc.com, which you should read. because this is a potentially unintended consequence of this break with qatar. normally, and it has happened in the past, these neighbors have broken with qatar to influence their foreign policy. but there are grocery stores in qatar going without food, because you can't get anything out of there by road unless you go through saudi arabia. >> exactly. they're in a land border with skraib, so if they want to get food in there, it has to come in from saudi, and we're seeing pictures of empty supermarket shelves in dohdoha, which is relatively unheard of. so the iranians want to exploit that, because it's no secret

that saudi and iran are not getting on well, especially after being involved in president trump's trips. so the president says, we can load food on to ships and get it to qatar within 12 hours. don't worry about that. they've cut you out of saudi air space? fly through iranian air space. and that is actually happen? >> that is actually happen. >> so if you were going anywhere but north, cuddle be going through -- >> exactly. and if you want to go from qatar to europe, you would be flying through iranian air space rather than saudi air space, which is extraordinary. >> this is probably not what they had in mind, but it's a story we'll cover very closely. ali arouzi. that wraps up the hour for me. i'll see you right back here tomorrow, 11:00 a.m. eastern. you can always find me on twitter, facebook, and instagram, on ali velshi. thanks for watching? "deadline white house with nicole wallace" starts right now. hi, everyone. it's health ca4:00.

if you were my attorney general, would you haveecused yourself from the russia investigation? that's the question president trump is putting to friends and allies lately, along with sharing his theory that all of his current political problems are tied to that single act by jeff sessions, the act of recusing himself from the russia investigation, which led to the appointment of special counsel, bob mueller. "the new york times" today reporting that president trump has intermittently fumed for months over mr. session' decision to recuse himself from the russia investigation into meddling in last year's election. the white house today dodging questions about trump's level of confidence in his ag. >> how would you describe the president's level of confidence in the attorney general, jeff sessions? >> i have not had a discussion with him about that. >> the last time you said that, there was a development. >> i'm asking -- i'm answering a question, which is, i have not had that discussion with him. >> so you can't say he has confidence in his attorney general? >> i said i have not had a discussion with him on the question. fich if i haven't had a discussion with him on