een light. that means go! oh, yeah. start saying yes to your company's best ideas. we're gonna hit our launch date! (scream) thank you! goodbye! let us help with money and know-how, so you can get business done. american express open. morning glory, america, i'm hugh hewitt, monday through friday, you can hear me on the salem radio network and its affiliates across the united states from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. now you can find me right here on msnbc on saturday morning, as well. today i bring to you my conversation with the director of the central intelligence agency, mike pompeo. this is his first interview with a news network since taking the job. i sat down with the former congressman, west point and harvard law graduate at cia headquarters in langley. i started by asking him about russia's meddling in last year's election and what the administration is doing to stop

it from happening again. >> i can't talk about the details of the intelligence, but we have, the intelligence community, have said that this election was meddled with by the russians, in a way that is frankly not particularly original. they've been doing this for an awfully long time and we are decades into the russians trying to undermine american democracy. in some ways, there's no news, but it certainly puts a heightened emphasis on our ability to figure out how to stop them. >> the news was actually that putin personally directed. do you think the president did that? >> i don't confirm the intelligence related to that. >> john brennan, your predecessor, is said in that story, to have called his counterpart, now your counterpart. have you talked to him? >> i don't talk about the liaison partners that i speak with. but it is important that we continue to work in places where we can on intelligence matters to keep america safe. counterterrorism is a perfect

example. americans play on russian planes, russians fly on american planes. to the extent we can keep planes in the sky. all of those terrorism issues and places they overlap, where there are terrorists in kazakhstan or russia or other places where the russians might have information, i certainly expect they'll share that with us. and by the same token, if we can help keep russians or american interests in russia alive by providing them with information, it's the right thing to do. >> is there a conversation underway inside the administration with president trump about what to reveal about the russian attack, so as to fully communicate to the american public the severity of what happened and our resolve to make sure it doesn't happen again? >> yeah, hugh, i think we've done this, in good part. you've seen unclassified reports relating to the russian activities. not only their cyber activities, but other propaganda active measures that they have been engaged in. we'll continue to review that. it is important that america understand what the russians are doing. frankly, sometimes what the russians aren't doing, i've read

reports in the press where they're just flat-out wrong, as well. so it is important that we communicate what the russians, the chinese, the ukrainians, what all of those folks are up to. and if we can declassify that information, we have an obligation to do that. >> director pompeo, it's been a bad month for the intelligence community. in the era of snowden, i shouldn't be surprised, but is our intelligence community product safe? can it even be safe now? >> i certainly can't comment on any of those cases, either what has been released in the indictment you referred to or elsewise. but we have an important obligation to perform countersbleblcounte counterintelligence is protecting the secrets that america steals from somebody stealing them back fruom us. and there have been failures. failures not only within the last couple of years but failures before that. we need to redouble our efforts. it's tough. you now have not only nation

states trying to steal our stuff, but folks like wikileaks out there trying to steal american secrets for the sole purpose of undermining the united states and democracy. >> this is a hundred-year problem. >> it's not new. >> it's going to get -- it goes back a hundred years, but the technology is going to turn it into a constant battle. how are you as the new director, you were on the house intel committee for a number of years before you came over, so you were aware of this, how are you trying to change the culture where people just give stuff away for political vendetta, or in the case of treachery, treason? >> in some ways, i think it's accelerated, hugh. i think there is a phenomenon, the warship of edward snowden, and those who steal american secrets for the purpose of self-aggrandizement or money or for whatever their motivation may be, does seem to be on the increase. and so, one of the reasons i'm with you today is to talk about what the intelligence community does, what we don't do, the fact that every one of the amazing people who work at the central intelligence agency has a single

focus, to protect american citizens. we do foreign intelligence collection. and i think the extent we can help people understand what we're doing and why we're doing it, there'll be a lot less support for these traitors who have done real harm to the men and women of america's armed forces, who are out there on freedom's frontier. >> for a long time, popular culture has loved your business. whether it's the novels of -- i brought along the most recent daniel silver movie, "house of silver." but whether it's spy games or three days at the condors, up to "homeland" now and "24," there's a popular culture that thinks they understand what goes on. and they get used to the idea of being rogue elements in a deep state. i personally don't use the term deep state, because there are countries that unfortunately have a deep state, and i don't think we do. but do you trust, around the table, that that what you say

here stays here? >> i do. i mean, it's that simple. the men and women who sign up to sacrifice, to work at the central intelligence agency are, with a handful of exceptions, patriots, aimed at lawfully doing what it is that the president directs them to do. and i've been here now 152 days and every person that i've met has been singularly focused on serving president trump, on serving america, on doing their job in a way that has elan and professionalism and with expertness that will serve our country incredibly well. >> are you looking over your back with the other agencies, though? because the leak parade has been extraordinarily long and granular. i mean, "the washington post" piece i referenced earlier has got to have 14 sources in it, all of whom probably broke the law when they talked to "the post." "the post" didn't break the law writing the story, but you know how that works. what about the rest of the government? >> i can only say this. we, and i would say all of

president trump's government, is incredibly focused on both stopping leaks, of any kind, from any agency, and when they happen, pursuing them with incredible vigor. and i think we'll have some successes both on the current side, stopping them from happening, as well as on punishing those who we catch, who have done it. >> soon? >> i'm counting on it. >> oh, very good. let's talk a little bit about the threats that are ready against america now, because you're in a unique position to talk about those. on the sunni extremism, isis and related groups, al shabaab, whatever they are, how much of a problem do we have here at home that your foreign intelligence permitted activities casts light on, even though that's up to the bureau to protect us from, what do you think is the scope of our problem here? >> the scope is very real here. we have had incidents here, we've seen them in san bernardino, we saw them florida, so the united states has not escaped the wrath of isis and its sunni islamic extremism. we have to be incredibly vigilant. as we are successful, as i know

the trump administration will be in retaking iraq and completing the mission in mosul, at taking the caliphate, the real estate of the caliphate away, we have to be incredibly diligent. and this is partly the cia's role, in making sure as these fighters decide to return somewhere, whether that's to europe or southeast asia, that they don't come back to the united states. they in some numbers present an enormous risk to the united states. >> in terms of isis, even though there are advances in mosul and raqqah, they gone mobile. it's li they're everywhere now and they've metastasized. how does that get put back in the box. and if i can add to it, probably the most important thing i think donald trump has said in his first five months is in saudi arabia when he called upon the imams of islam to fully communicate to radicals that your soul will be fully condemned. a memorable line by president trump. that's trying to get at the heart of it. are we being successful in that? >> so there are two pieces to this. one's the realtime piece, that

is, those who have been radical ids, those who are currently engaged in terror support or terror activities. that is an intelligence and law enforcement activity, and we have to go find these folks everywhere and take them out, everywhere we find them, we are intent upon that. the second piece is what you've described. there's a longer battle. and that battle is, will be fought out in the ideological world. and we need to encourage our partners who have a much greater capacity to have an impact on that. and you saw what the president said in saudi arabia as a good example. need to ensure that they are not fomenting this. and that folks inside their country are not supporting it and their educational curriculum isn't part of the problem, if we do those things well, we can get this under control. it will take years, but we can begin to actually prevail in the ideological warfare that is very much at the center of the fight. >> coming up, more of my exclusive conversation with cia director pompeo. including his working relationship with president trump, right after this here on msnbc.

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welcome back. if you're just tuning in, i'm hugh hewitt. i'll be with you saturday mornings here on msnbc. now to the second part of my conversation with cia director, mike pompeo. in his answer to how he works daily with the president. >> i'm with the president nearly every day. we have 35 or 40 minutes on his schedule. that almost always runs long, which is great. great questions. he is a serious consumer of the product that the intelligence community delivers and i appreciate that, because i think it informs how he thinks about the world. i know that my predecessor handled it differently, wasn't there very often. president obama consumed his intelligence in a different way. president trump is incredibly

demanding of the intelligence community, asks us incredibly difficult questions, and counts on myself and other leaders in the ic to deliver those answers for him. >> some of his critics like to allege he is uninterested in facts on the ground. what do you think of that? >> i cannot imagine a statement that is anymore false than the one that would attribute president trump not being interested in intelligence and facts when it comes to national security. he's an avid consumer of the products we provide, thinks about them and comes back and asks great questions, and then, perhaps most importantly, relies upon that information. >> you're not shy, mike pompeo, west point, number one in your class, do you push back with the president? do you two mix it up and spark it up and do other people around him do some request ? >> absolutely. the the whole team does. we want to get to the right answer. so i think it's great when the president or vice president or secretary of defense scribbles a note to me and says, mike, i want you to go look at this and have your team do another scrub.

those are exactly the kind of conversations and we'll come back and say, nope, we had it right or we missed something andics if it. so we push back. our goal so to make sure he has the facts, the truth about what it is going on in the world as we best understand it. >> we've gotten big things wrong before, being the united states. there were no weapons of mass destruction in iraq. the national intelligence estimate about the nuclear weapons program was wrong about what they were doing. and we did not connect the dots before 9/11, because of interagency barriers and jealousies. one, do you think we've connected all the dots that we can find and have done so despite turf wars? >> yes, i think we're in a much better place today. whether we've connected them all or not, i suspect the answer is no. i suspect perfection cannot be achieved. and i take no credit for this, this would have happened before my watch, but the intelligence community has matured. it has taken lessons from past failures and applied them to today's problems in pretty sophisticated ways, which i think knocked down lots of the

risk that was sitting out there. intelligence gasp or intelligence that wasn't properly communicated. we still, always, have a long ways to go. our adversaries are viciously fast in how they think about attacking america. we have to be just as good. just as nimble. if we look back at the problems of 2001, or frankly, even the problems of 2011, we won't be fast enough to crush our adversaries. >> now, in terms of being fast, that also means you might be wrong in a big way. and this "washington post" story, about which you cannot comment, suggests that the intelligence community, almost uniformly believed that secretary colllinton was going win. they had an assumption built into how they handled intelligence. assumptions are killers in your business. we had an assumption of wmd in the desert. what do you do to stop a culture of assumptions? >> you just viciously attack assumptions.

that is, you go try to prove them, provide data sets that support the assumptions, and have the same folks or different folks attack the presumptions and make challenges and arguments about why that assumption is just wrong and try to provide data sets that crush the assumption. it's that kind of rigor which requires enormous stealing of secrets. that is, you need a big database upon which to rely to understand which sets of assumptions are appropriate. if we do those things well, we'll get it right most of the time. and on the big questions, we should get it right nearly all of the time. >> second major area of risk, shia, islamic extremism, headquartered in tehran with franchises in hezbollah land, in south lebanon, in yemen and in other places around the world. number one, is iran, to the best of your ability to tell, living up to the commitments it made in the deal that it did with president obama? >> i'll leave the judgments about that to others. here's what i can say with absolutely certainty.

iran remains the islamic republic of iran. it remains the world's largest state sponsor of terror. every place along the way, with respect to the agreement, it has challenged that agreement, that is, it has stretched the understandings in that agreement. and today, we find it with enormous influence, influence that far outstripped where it was six or seven years ago, whether it's the influence they have of the government in baghdad, whether it's the increasing strength of he has bolla and lebanon, they work alongside the houthis in iran, the iraqi shias that are fighting alongside the border in syria, certainly the shia forces that are engaged in syria. iran is everywhere throughout the middle east. the last seven years have been a disaster, allowing the iranians to expand all across that important reebgion. >> in your opinion, what is the greater threat, the islamic extremists of the sunni variety headquartered in raqqah and around the world or of hezbollah and iran and the shia extremism?

what is more different? >> they're fundamentally different. one is a powerful nation state with wealth and resources and an organized government and an established piece of real estate upon which they have complete control. so from a long-term -- as a long-term threat to the united states of america, i would say that iran poses the longer challenge. but i always hesitate to rank order them. isis is an enormous risk to the united states today. and we have to do everything we can to defeat them. >> major changes in saudi arabia and the kingdom succession this week. did they surprise the united states? and are you comfortable with the relationship we have with our keystone sunni allies in egypt and saudi arabia and elsewhere in the golf? >> my very first trip as the director of the cia was to the middle east. i met with my intelligence counterparts all across the gulf states. they welcomed an american who wasn't on the side of the iranians coming to visit with them. what they wanted to understand was that america was going to

understand them, support them when they were pushing back against allies, against adversaries that we share, and that would work closely alongside them to help them expand their economies, as well. i think we have great relationships with those gulf states. we've watched the transition in saudi arabia taking place. i watched it as a member of congress for years. it's the natural order of things. >> there is a deep concern that saudi arabia still harbors people who supported the 9/11 attack on the united states, extremist elements. do you believe they have that problem contained and crushed? >> i don't want to comment on the details of the intelligence, but i can tell you that the saudis have made a fundamental decision that they're not going to engage in that kind of activity that caused so much trouble over the past decades. we have an obligation to make sure that they live up to that commitment, but i think they understand that it's no longer in saudi arabia's best interests to support that kind of

terrorism. the president has made it very clear to them that the condition of a good relationship to our country will be ensuring that terrorism isn't sponsored from their country. >> specialists think north korea poses a nuclear threat to hawaii. how much danger does north korea pose? >> a very real danger. i hardly ever escape a day at the white house without the president asking me about north korea and how it is that the united states is responding to that threat. it's very much at the top of his mind. for 20 years, america has whistled past the graveyard, hoping on hope, that north korea would turn colors and become part of the western civilization . there's no evidence that is going to take place, absent a very real, very concrete set of policies that put pressure on the north koreans to de-nuclearize. i think that's what you see secretary tillerson trying to do around the world. they are ever-closer to having the capacity to hold america at ric risk with a nuclear weapon.

>> russia surprised out when they took crimea. china surprised us when they built artificial islands. has your capability in those areas seen significant sources directed to them so we're not surprised again? the entire mission of the cia is to ensure that we provide leaders with information to avoid those kinds of tactical and strategic surprise. we have been incredibly blessed by the american taxpayers with resources to perform that function. now it's our task, my team is tasked to ensure that something like that doesn't happen. >> i mentioned dan silva, he zrab describes you in this book. "the agency's new director, payne was west point, ivy league law, a formerly deeply conservative member of congress from one of the dakotas," of course, you were from kansas. "he was big and bluff with a face like an eastern island statue." he said he surrounded himself with other military people and

that the cia was going military. richard helms famously said, we're not boy scouts. if we wanted to be the boy scouts, we would join the boy scouts. the cia becoming more operationally potent in the field? >> i hope so. it is fervently my expectation that the tradition, right, we came out of the oss and wild bill donovan. it is fervently my hope that i can spur this organization, and frankly, don't even have to spur it. the warriors are here, release the bridle and allow this agency to do the things that will serve and protect america in ways that frankly the last administration just didn't let them do. we're going to do it. we're going to get out there. you can't win if you don't take risk. the president has directed the cia to win and we're going to do it. >> on that note, director mike pompeo, thank you for the time today. >> thank you very much, hugh. >> for more of the conversation, visit msnbc.com. send me your comments via twitter. my account there is the same as the name of this show, hugh hewitt. we'll be right back. for mom" per roll

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hey, everybody. good morning. i'm thomas roberts here at msnbc world headquarters in new york. 8:30 in the east, 5:30 out west. we begin with the headlines at the half. a new nbc news/"wall street journal" poll reflecting what the public believes with respect to james comey, donald trump, and the battle between the two men. 45% back comey, while 22% believe the president. this is one more key gop senator, who now says he can't support the current version of the senate health care bill. we'll have more on that in a moment. and then we go overseas, with this update on more than 140 people in china feared buried in a landslide that slammed into some 40 homes today, a rescue team of more than 400 workers is

searching through the rocky rubble and has already saved two lives. back here in the u.s., millions in the path of extreme weather today. threats of tornadoes and flash flooding as what's left of tropical storm cindy heads north, ohio and kentucky are expected to see the worst of it. now on to politics, with house intel ranking member adam schiff ramping up pressure on republica republicans. >> in a gop-led congress, that comes down to not a legal definition of high crimes and misdemeanors, but rather whether gop members would be in a position to go home to their districts and say that the evidence they have seen is of sufficient seriousness and is sufficiently disqualifying that the president must be removed from office, and that this is not simply a way of nullifying

an election that others disagreed with. and new this morning, president trump slamming democrats as senate republicans are encountering obstacles in trying to pass its version of the health care bill. here's part of his weekly address. >> my administration will never stop fighting for you and for the health care system that you deserve. we'll get it done, even if we don't have any help from the democrats, we'll get it done. >> so joining me now is eliza collins, congressional reporter for "usa today" and john harwood, cnbc editor at large. great to see both of you this morning. john, let me begin with you. "the washington post" reporting that the senator spoke with ted cruz on thursday all in this attempt to try to win him over. he's among the five gop senators declaring a no on the bill. then we have dean heller saying that this is making too many cuts. he was very outfro front on thi. another four senators saying it doesn't roll back obamacare enough.

does mcconnell have a process to get the votes he does? >> i suspect he does. there's late amendments to try to mollify some of these senators. senator mike lee of utah has just written a post in the last 24 hours where he says this bill doesn't meet my press, it preserves the broken obamacare system, but just makes it worse for the poor, better for corporations. but he's still open to voting for it. now, he -- what mike lee wants is an on the-out provision for states. others can get smaller rifle-shot type amendments to bring them over. don't know if that's going to happen, because there is a significant element of opposition and our nbc/"wall street journal" poll shows three to one that the public does not like the house-passed bill, which is similar to the senate bill. but this game is not over yet. >> eliza, when we talk about dean heller and the response that he had about this and saying that, you know, obamacare, the biggest lie out of that is if you like your

doctor, you can keep your doctor. and he said that one of the bigger lies out of this one is about the fact that you're going to be able to afford it. that this isn't going to cost you much more. what do you think is going to make him move to a yes, especially since there's a pro-trump pac that's going after him, he's vulnerable for 2018 re-election. >> well, dean heller is interesting, because he's like the conservatives want the bill to move to the right. heller wants it to move to the left. so if one side is going to lose on this, he wants medicaid funding. and he wants it to be a slower transition out of it. he wants to make sure that there's a safety net for the people in nevada, nevada accepted money for medicaid. so he wants to make sure that those people are covered. and it's really unclear yet how that can happen, while you also have the conservatives who want less spending. so it's not quite sure what he'll accept, but he also was like the conservatives, not a straight-up no, but he said he's no on the current form. >> john, in your piece, you have a new article up about trump's core voters.

and basically, they could suffer the most under this gop health bill. but you say they won't punish him for it. so basically, he's going to ask forgiveness, not permission on this, even though it was kind of a core issue that he campaigned on. why don't you think trump will get in any trouble for doing this? >> well, he may not get in trouble, but this is something that we won't know until it actually plays out. there was a recent study of the trump constituency, and what it concluded was a bunch of political scientist who s who l at this. what it concluded, the 20% of trump voters who compelled him in the primaries and put him over the top in the general election, people that actually lean left on economics, but what motivates them the most is their conception of who an american is. racial identity is part of that, religious identity for a christian is part of that. and so trump made a bond with them on those characteristics. if he -- if the health care bill passes and it cuts many of their health care, a lot of these people are low-income in, you

know, places like arkansas, kentucky, west virginia, low-income, they're on medicaid, they might be disabled, are they going to pay attention to the health care part of it, or the way trump has bonded with them on what it means to be american? we don't know that and that's a fascinating test for the senators who have different relationships with those voters in deciding whether to vote for this bill. >> and the big test with mcconnell, leader mcconnell pushing for a vote this week, eliza, do you see it playing out, kind of like what we saw with paul ryan. he was supposed to pull the house vote and then they were able to pass it. do you think mcconnell has the leverage they need to make it happen? >> the house and senate work very different. the house had the luxury of more time. they kind of had more tile on this. when they pulled the bill, they got to go back, they went home, they were negotiating -- i was actually with congressman mark meadows, one of the people who stopped the bill right after

that first bill was pulled in north carolina. he was on the phone with mike pence like the whole time, negotiating. and then they got to come back and do that. the senate wants this to get through before the july 4th recess, which is, of course, the end of next week. so it's a different process. the one thing they're doing the house didn't do is the amendments, so you could see the bill changing kind of in realtime next week. but you can also see democrats putting just globs and globs of amendments to try to slow down the process, make this poison pill amendments and make this bill go down that way. >> jonathan, speaking to sources and friends, because i want to real quickly get to this post report, sources and friends in d.c. that are just kind of really reeling about this story that they had about president obama's efforts to thwart and punish russia, the rock and hard place he was in between during the election. here's what the cia director, mike pompeo, just told hugh hewitt who aired moments ago in the 8:00 a.m. half hour. >> they've been doing this for an awfully long time and we are

decades into the russians trying to undermine american democracy. so in some ways, there's no news. but it certainly puts a heightened emphasis on our ability to figure out how to stop them. >> so, heightened sense of responsibility on how to stop them. president trump gave an interview, he pretty much blames president obama. what is the trump administration doing, because, you know, fool me once, shame on me -- fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. what are we doing to protect ourselves? >> well, from all the public indications with respect to president trump, nothing. he has not owned up to the idea that this has happened, except in this tweet blaming president obama. remember, over and over, he's cast doubt on this idea. on the other hand, i think mike pompeo is hawkish on this issue, and so what is mike pompeo doing behind the scenes? i suspect that there's a lot going on from his perspective,

but president trump is consistently and strangely refused to condemn russia and go after them. >> meanwhile, eliza, we've got president trump denying the existence of tapes. we know about that tweet, about conversations with james comey. ti . i want to play for you what the ranking democrat on the house intel committee, adam schiff, told my colleagues on the hill on thursday about it. take a listen. >> the president's now denial is not a complete denial. he's only saying, he didn't record the conversations and he doesn't know whether there are recordings out there. so we'll continue to explore this. during the course of our continuing investigation, we will ask others, are they aware of recordings? is there evidence of recordings. and we'll make sure that we get an answer and a final answer. >> and meanwhile, the house intel committee had sent a letter, eliza, to the white house, asking for any evidence of tapes. they just wrote back a letter saying, we would like to direct you to the president's tweets about this. and now after 41 days of this

mystery, is it really solved? or does it just add another layer to the investigation? >> i wouldn't say solved, i would say that now it is clear, or at least is what the president said is he did not record the tapes, which, of course, is confusing, because that original tweet made it seem like he did. you said he left it open, which is true. you said with all of the wiretapping and leaking and unmasking going on in the government, it's not clear if there were tapes or s or not. so this is typical trump. he doesn't want to shut anything down or be clear on anything, so he leave s it really hazy, whic is not a good strategy. because now that -- as adam schiff said, they're going to keep investigating. it definitely didn't go away, but i think the white house can now say, well, we've given you an answer, you have to stop asking us about it. >> all right. more to come, for sure. john harwood, eliza collins, great to see both of you. thank you for your time this morning. >> good to be here. so premium sticker shock. we're going to get into the issue if the gop health care

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keeping the world of business connected and protected. that's the power of and. under obamacare, the average family's premiums have risen over $5,000 a year. that is the fault of the federal governme government. my biggest concern is under this current draft, premiums would continue to rise. and if premiums continue to rise after we hold a press conference claiming to have repealed obamacare, that's a disaster. >> yeah, that's a disaster. republicans senator ted cruz giving a blunt analysis of the senate's better care reconciliation bill. so if it passes, it would be a big victory for young people, who would no longer be mandated to buy in and would get larger subsidies, lower premiums, and for high-income earners who would benefit from a hefty tax cut. the biggest losers would be those on medicaid, poor, older americans, also drug addicts, as

well as planned parenthood and the centers for disease control and prevention. joining me now is jonathan gruber, a key architect of the aca, known as obamacare. so was senator cruz right about this? were premiums going up that high under the current aca, under obamacare? >> here's the basic fact. there's only two truths in life. baseball trues are too slow and health care premiums always go up. >> i thought it was death and taxes? >> no, those are the more important truths. the relevant question is not if health care costs are going to go up. they've always gone up. the question is, what happens to the growth rate? under obamacare, health care premiums have grown at their slowest rate in measured history in the u.s. premiums in the exchanges, everyone's making fun of the exchanges, saying how they're blowing up. in fact, under obama, health care premiums in the exchanges, even when you include last year's big increases, rose 7% a year compared to 12% a year before obamacare passed. obamacare was working, it was bringing health care costs under

control, it was getting conch. a . and this republican bill is not good for young people. it's not good for young people, because young people face the chance of getting sick. young people will eventually get sick. young people will face the risk of catastrophic illness. and when they do, they'll find there's no coverage there for them and no way to get that insurance. >> do you think the lack of young folks having to be mandated into this, and basically insurance is just that. you're trying to insure yourself from any type of medical disaster that comes our way. most of us are just one banana peel slip away from that type of expense. that's what insurance is for, but young people typically don't get ill. without the mandate, is that the biggest problem, that they can elect just not to be in the system? >> basically, look, it's the three-legged stool that's been discussed before. americans want to get rid of discrimination insurance markets. we don't like the fact that insurers can say no to you because you're sick. that's not insurance. the problem is if you tell

insurers they can't say no to people because they're sick, but you let people wait until they're sick to buy insurance, insurers will go out of business. and this is not just some theoretical economic conjecture. five states tried this experiment. they tried telling insurers, you can't discriminate against the sick, without the mandate. and in every single state, the insurance market collapsed. and that's what will happen here. if we pass this senate bill and keep the regulations, which by the way are very important. we don't want discrimination by insurers. if we allow those to state, but get rid of the mandate and massively scale back the tax credits, insurance markets are going to collapse. we've seen this before. it will happen again. >> all right. so when we think about what america wants, and they do want some version of government health care, according to the polls, the aca seems to give republicans this foothold to say that it failed, because there are insurers who left the market place, for various different reasons. why not just look at. single-payer systems. explain that, jonathan? >> well, first of all, one

thing, you know -- has the internet failed? no, the internet has been successful. have there been millions and millions of internet companies that have gone out of business? yes. the fact that there are insurers leaving the exchanges doesn't prove a failure, it just proves it's a new dynamic market. >> but they're not being replaced. >> they are. there are new insurers -- before president trump got elected, there was nowhere in the country where you could not buy insurance on the exchanges. only since trump got elected that we're finding these hot spots where people can't buy health insurance. it's a tough new market. insurers are coming and going. so i really reject the notion the market was failing. the market was fragile, because but it was growing and it was going to work until trump destroyed pit. >> with insurers coming and going, how do americans who want to be a part of a health care system that the polls demonstrate that they want actually find the insurance that they can afford? >> well, basically, the way you do it is by making insurance

affordable and the first step to that is by having income-based tax credits and medicaid, which is what the affordable care act did. the affordable care act, if you were below four times poverty, it made health insurance affordable for you by including tax credits to make health insurance affordable. the problem was, if you're above that level, there are many people for whom health insurance wasn't affordable, and we need to deal with it. but you don't deal with it by removing the piece that makes health care affordable for lower income americans. >> what about an option for medicaid for all? >> i think a single-payer option is something that has been discussed a long time. from an economics perspective, it's got a lot of pros and cons. from a political perspective, it's all cons, okay? basically, it's just really hard to get this through. you're talking about -- you'd have to have a large tax increase, you'd have to make many people change their insurance coverage, which they don't like, you'd have to basically, really upend the u.s. health care system. we have tried for a hundred years to do that. we've always failed.

the reason obamacare succeeded, and it did succeed, is because it was more modest. it wasn't as ambitious as past efforts like the clinton effort and previous efforts, okay? and the thing is, in the long run, if we want to think about single payer, that's a about si are fine things to discuss, the pros and cons. but what's really important for viewers is not to lose their fight for blake because of some hope for single payor. single payor is not happening in the near term. it simply not. >> based on the information we know about mcconnell wanting a vote next week in the senate, do you think as the bill exeists right now there's any viability of that happening? >> i have no idea where everything is upside down and nobody pays attention to the truth anymore. i know we're going to get a horrific cbo score next week. the score will be horrible but

it won't be as bad as the house bill because the senate is cheating by pushing the damage out by a few years. when the cbo comes out and says 15 million will lose insurance instead of 23 million. no, it's not. it's just cheating, taking advantage of the fact that cbo is a ten-year window. >> there's this renewed alarm in the wake of the deadly apartment fire in london. that is forcing a massive evacuation. we'll explain why next. new roads and bridges. new mass transit. new business friendly environment. new lower taxes. and new university partnerships to grow the businesses of tomorrow today. learn more at esd.ny.gov

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overnight in london officials ordered urgent evacuations of five high rise buildings after they discovered materials similar to those in the grenfell fire last week. lucy khavanov, what more do we know about the evacuations? >> good morning. the fallout from the grenfell tower fire continues with the

u.k. government announcing at least 27 high rise apartment buildings have failed fire safety tests. overnight hundreds of residents were evacuated from several buildings in north london because their homes were believed to be unsafe. it's been a chaotic process. residents said they were given no notice, the evacuations happening late at night, they were told to stay with family and friends, some got hotel rooms and some went it a community center and they have nowhere to go. they are undertaking urgent safety upgrades. residents are asking why the flammable cladding was used in the first place. it's not just in london but in manchester, plymouth and elsewhere. london as metropolitan police are considering manslaughter

charg charges. the police investigation is focused on how the blaze started, how it spread so fast and whether any people or organizations should be held responsible. the number of people killed in that fire, thomas, remains at 79 but it is likely to rise. there are a lot of sublets in that tower, there may have been many more families and people living there than authorities believed. authorities asking anyone to come forward with information for anyone who may have been living in the building. >> why would the cbc not want to meet with the president? we'll talk about that in just a few minutes. stick around. it comes when your insurance company says they'll only pay three-quarters of what it takes to replace it. what are you supposed to do?

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headquarters in new york, 9 a.m. in the east, 6 a.m. out west. new information about the russia probe. today the cia director weighing in on the alleged role of vladimir putin and the hacking of the election. teak a look. >> this committee has said this election was meddled with by the russians in a way that is frankly not particularly original. >> plus how much interest does president trump tack in national security reports delivered by the cia director? we have that for you. and then there were five. that's the number of republican senators now against their own party's health care bill. will the repeal and replace bill even get to a vote last week. and now new reaction it was part of the white house strategy to get the truth out. and the president's son-in-law facing new questions about his security cleanse from both sides of the aisle. we have the details next. but we do want to begin with the new reaction of the president