(laughs) (voice on phone) it's not millennial enough. there are a lot of ways to say no. thank you so much. thank you! so we're doing it. yes! "we got a yes!" start saying yes to your company's best ideas. let us help with money and know-how, so you can get business done. american express open. morning, glory, america. i'm hugh hue et. a monster unleashed hundreds, if not thousands of rounds, on 22,000 americans. suddenly we were again back in a news cycle that includes familiar geographical names like sandy hook, orlando, ft. hood, columbine. each of these massacres has unique facts and their own awful villains and tragic heart-breaking stories, as well as sheer rows and inspiring acts of courage and selflesslenessse.

president trump has flown to sites of tragedy in four weeks. you sat down with speaker of the house of representatives paul ryan to discuss the president's response to all of these event, as well as breaking news about twitter and facebook and the progress of the must have in the eyes of the gop tax bill. we begin our conversation with speaker ceremonial office by talking about the bump stocks found in the hotel room of the killer in las vegas. bump stock is a new term for many americans, including me and the speaker. here is that interview. speaker paul ryan, thanks for sitting down with me. >> congratulations on the new show. >> i'm enjoying it. but it is a grim week in las vegas. i want to begin there. the president visited this city this week and immediately talked about legislation. john cornyn wants hearings on bump stocks. are you open to a vote on bump stocks? >> yeah.

i didn't even know where they are until this week, and i'm an avid sportsman. we are quicking coly coming up speed. you can take a semiautomatic and turn it into an automatic. that is something we're definitely going to have to look into. >> jimmy fallon weapons night, clinton said gop fully sold out to the nra. your reaction? >> i disagree. we are sticking with the constitution. this is a constitutional right. you don't casually dispense of people's rights. just in your answer to the last question, if something allows a person to circumvent the law, that is something we have to look at. >> australia banned some shotguns, awe buyback between 650,000 and a million. is there anything holding you back from bringing such a proposal to the house floor? i think it would fail. >> i totally disagree. yeah. the second amendment is holding

us back from bringing a proposal like that. >> in order to illustrate to the american people -- >> as a show vote? >> yes. >> that is show boat politics. we need to spend time on legislation we actually intend to pass. >> lots of forums are being held. we have had long conversations -- >> and that the mortgage interest deduction. >> we'll come to that a little bit later. are you willing to do those sorts of town halls? >> well, i just did one with jake tapper on another network. i do employee town halls, telephone town halls. what we have not wanted to do is have constituents get shouted out by protesters that are bussed in. that is typically what the tactic has been lately. >> if i set one up with lester holt, can we count on it, speaker? >> we'll see. we'll see. >> let me turn to big tech and then go to taxes. i had kevin mccarthy last week.

we talked about twitter, facebook, google. they are the big three. they are powerful, private. is it time to look at whether a new agency has to get some control over them? >> yeah. what i find with technology and anti-trust laws, technology moves so fast that something that seems like boheme educate today can be taken over tomorrow. if you try to stop big firms from being big, you will slow down economic growth and development. these firms will be replaced by some other disruptive technology. that is the kind of economic vitality we want in our free enterprise. i don't think you should knee jerk. we want the market to be disruptive. we want entrepreneurs to have access.

i think you will do violence to the system that gives us free enterprise in the first place. >> it doesn't seem to me likely. but national security does alarm me. facebook had more than 3,000 russian accounts. >> yeah. >> what do we do about it? >> so on that, we're having hearings about that. so with respect to other governments trying to influence our election, in particular russia, that is clearly something we have to have a hand on. the reason we know things about this is doing a russia investigation both in the house and the senate to find out what is it they do and how can we uncover what they do, prevent it from happening again, and share that information in technology with our allies. they try to disrupt the french election. i think putin's gain delegitimized democracy so he can look a little bit better by

comparison. we need to do everything we can to prevent that from spreading. >> i've heard senior executives from the industry completely reject the idea that end to end encryption is a danger. they otherwise deny law enforcement the tools they need. >> these are extremely complicated issues. they involve different principals that are very important. you can't knee jerk on any of these things. we have committees that look into all of these things. we have the russian investigation right now. what you don't do is just take knee-jerk reaction not knowing the full consequences of what it is government would be doing. you need to pause, think this through and understand the ramifications. >> legislating is in this, is paul ryan? >> if we conclude this is the right thing that this protects principals, property rights, our

constitution and it also protects national security, then yeah. but if you're asking he me to make a choice between protecting civil liberties and not, i'm going to vote to protect civil liberties. so it is important that you understand what we do. we don't make rash decisions at the government level because we have been infringed on a person's civil liberties. you have to think these things through. >> it was 17 years between the completion of the trans continental railroad. the big rail roads ran everything. it's been about 13 years since facebook arrived. >> so we have four more years. >> facebook has a huge moat. is there a way for authorities to cooperate? >> okay. so facebook is getting abused by the russians. say you get rid of facebook tomorrow. what are the russians going to

do? they will go use somebody else. so how do they do it and how do we stop them from doing it. that's the question. >> all right. let's go to taxes. chairman of house ways and means, i believes the bill will clear in october. i think that's crazy. what do you think? >> i don't think it's crazy at all. i think that's the plan. >> what date does it get to the committee? >> i don't know what time this is airing. >> saturday. >> so this is thursday. we're passing the budget today. we're passing the budget today. the senate is marking it up right now. the train is on the tracks and we're moving. the whole purpose of this timeline is to get law this year, 2017, so americans wake up in 2018 with a new tax system that is wired for growth. that gives middle income people a real break on their taxes. dramatically simplifies the system to get rid of loopholes so the code is ferrer and allow people to file their taxes.

9 out of 10 file taxes on a postcard. that is good for families, families living paycheck to paycheck, economic growth. we are hitting our businesses in such a way with a bad tax code that puts them at a huge disadvantage. you lower rates so they're on par with the rest of the world or better, we will have is much faster economic growth, more jobs, higher wages. that's the goal of tax reform. the reason we want to get it done this year is so we have a good 2018 so people can go back to work. if we can get 3%, it's not something we will never get again before. but we have to get policies that give us 3% growth. >> the collision with k street is coming. by that i mean -- >> it hasn't been done since '86. >> state and local tax deduction is the one drawing the most fire. "new york times" said it is is almost certainly not going to make it in. what does the speaker say about that. >> you have to allow everyone in

america to get middleclass tax cut, a simplified tax system. keeping things like charity and mortgages and a standard deduction, you make it so people don't have to itemize or have a long tax form. you subject much less of their income to taxes in the first place. that is the radical simplification that americans, no matter what state they're from, thankful. >> the job of speaker is to help craft framework and then be respectful of the committees that write this bill. it is is clearly on the table. if you want to lower taxes for all americans, if you want to simplify the tax code you to reduce loopholes to lower everybody's tax rates. remember, in exchange for less hoop holes means a higher deduction and lower tax rates. that's the purpose of tax reform. but what i don't try to do as speaker of the house is micromanage the committee and do

the actual work of writing the bills. i used to chair this committee. the last thing i wanted was the speaker of the house tell me how to write that i had been years working on. >> i'll be back with more from speaker ryan in just a moment. comfortable you are in it. so find a venus smooth that contours to curves, flexes for comfort, and has a disposable made for you. skin smoothing venus razors. that adjusts on both sides to your ideal comfort your sleep number setting.

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throughout history, the one meal when we come together, break bread, share our day and connect as a family. [ bloop, clicking ] and connect, as a family. just, uh one second voice guy. [ bloop ] huh? hey? i paused it. bam, family time. so how is everyone? find your awesome with xfinity xfi and change the way you wifi. welcome back. i'm hugh hewitt.

i sat down with the speaker of the house paul ryan on thursday. we talked about las vegas and big tech and of course the tax bill in&generally how is president trump doing in his job as comforter in chief? >> we saw the president make a comment about puerto rico bonds this week and the bonds crate erred. >> i saw that. look, we passed legislation -- i actually negotiated this bill last year. we have an oversight bill for puerto rico to deal with their financing crisis. that is the proper place. so this is not about having government change property rights on bonds. this is about we have an oversight board that is working to get puerto rico in a good position so they can go borrow again. if we were to take away property rights, it would be hard for them to ever go out and borrow in the future.

we have to be mindful of that. >> i bring up their bonds not because it is a good idea to kill the bond orders. it's not. you might have to bail out puerto rico. >> the issue is can you help puerto rico nurse themselves back to fiscal health, economic health so in the future they can go on out and borrow money. and if you mishandle the situation, you could set up puerto rico for failure for a long time in the future. we want to set up puerto rico for success in the future. >> so when you deal with the state and local income tax deductions, aren't you messing with the bonds of other states. >> bonds are tax preferred. the ratings of bonds and the bond markets are going to be just fine because if you get three plus percent economic growth, if you lower tax rates on hard working americans and on small businesses you're going to have a stronger economy. it will give you more revenue, more growth, and make it easier for municipalities and states to go out and float their bonds and

finance their projects. >> speaker, you're talking to a human being. but you're also talking to a subchapter s corporation. and so this corporation loves your tax bill. it will take my rate from 39% to 25%. why in the world? >> can i ask you a lot of personal questions? >> no. >> this is one of the things our tax writers, which i used to be one, has to look at. take the best quarterback in america, aaron rodgers. we don't want a tax law that says aaron rodgers gets his salary from the green bay packers, taxed at 39.6 and let him turn into an llc and be a 25. that's not what we're interested in doing here. if you are talking about the subchapter s that is out in an industrial park with 50 employees competing against canada and they're at 40%, yeah,

we will lower so they can be competitive. how do you have the right rules and definitions of income so that aaron rodgers -- like i said, he's the best guy out there, so he can't all of a sudden shelter his income from the regular tax rate that is applied to him and how do you define business tax so it is lower tax. >> that's complicated. >> it is very complicated. i could go on for a half hour how you write these. point being wage and salary is a different outcome. the president wants a fourth rate so they don't get the big rate cut that goes to the middleclass. but don't forget, hugh, eight out of ten businesses in america are not corporations. they are llcs, subchapter ss. we are really shooting ourselves in the foot. we tax between 35% and almost

40% in america and the rest of the world averages 22.5%. in this global economy, what that means is it tells companies in america, don't make things in america. don't be an american company. move overseas. the thunderstorm stat in this room is made by johnson controls, i bet. that used to be the biggest business in wisconsin, headquartered in milwaukee. it is now headquartered in dublin, island. it is at 12%. >> if we tackle aaron rodgers, pardon the pun, he is making money by doing funny ads. that is not coming from the green bay packers. that is subchapter s. >> i don't know what his is. the point being you have to have straight line tests. just real tests of is this a business or is this a person with guaranteed wage and salary. >> let me close by asking about the president. there have been four crises in a

month. irma, harvey, maria, and now the las vegas massacre. how do you think the president is doing under this pressure? >> i have talked to him about these things. he has tremendous compassion. he is flying to these emergencies as soon as he can without jeopardizing responses. he is stopping what he's doing. we have talked about the supplementals, these issues. the people who are suffering from these tragedies are in his mind front and center. >> last question, speaker, ryan. are you going babe ruth on this tax bill? are you going to pick your defense? is it going to happen this year? >> it's got to happen. >> that's not a yes. >> well, i'm the house of representatives, not the united states senate. i was going to show you my chart. >> please do. >> we have bills passed out of the house, 383. wait. these are the wrong -- sorry. here we go. i have two-sided charts. we save money here.

337 bills sitting in the senate. 274. so on this half of the capital, we can hit our timelines, pass our bills. it takes more time to get things over to the senate. i believe the senate, using the rules that they can to avoid filibusters, to get things done quickly, and they are just as invested as we are to get this done by the end of the year, that's our plan. that's their plan. we can meet the deadline. i'm sure they can too. >> got to go. >> see you. >> that kbgtdz my interview with speaker ryan. i'll be right back. jimmy's gotten used to his whole room smelling like sweaty odors.

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welcome back to hugh's views. if you just watched my interview with speaker paul ryan, you will have heard him say he joins with senate cornyn in calling of scrutiny of bump stocks. he rejected out of hand former secretary of state clinton's assessment of the republican party as "fully sold out to the nra." the speaker finally rejected what he called show votes on measures like the so-called australian option, which involves massive bans of many types of weapons, huge buybacks of other guns. the speaker was, per usual, candid and transparent. he believes in free markets and the freedoms guaranteed by the bill of rights, including the second amendment. i pressed him for more conversation, more candor and i welcome all members of congress doing the same, and the president. but to have a good conversation requires a constitutionally literal media. putting tphapbts and professors

who begin with candor about the fact that the massacre in las vegas would not have been prevented by any of the standard proposals about gun control. just that simple is admission as candidate speaker's conversation about he didn't know what bump stocks were. the sooner we understand that and the last time we spend tackling straw man around the las vegas massacre the better off everyone will be. thank you for watching this week. you can catch me monday through friday on the radio 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. eastern on the salem radio network. keep the conversation going on on msnbc.com/hughhewitt. yes. this is the j.d. power award for dependability. now i want you to give it to the friend that you think is most dependable. ohhhh. ughh. wow.

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hey there. good morning, everyone. i'm alex witt here at msnbc headquarters in new york at the half hour. six days after the attack in las vegas, the motive of gunman stephen paddock is confounding authorities. so police are now planning to use billboards in the city to ask for the public's help to determine why he did it. more on that in a moment. the gulf coast is bracing for hurricane nate. it is is expected to make landfall early tomorrow morning perhaps as a category 2 storm. it would be the third hurricane to hit the u.s. mainland in six weeks. the fbi says a plot to b