i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. othis edition i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. wthis edition i'm edition i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. this en i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. this e i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. nthis n i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. othis edition i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. wthis edition i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. his edition i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. is edin i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. s edit i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. editi i'm lester holt.ion i'mi'm les. i'm lester holt. thank you for joining us. reset >> john kelly, the head of homeland security, in. >> general kel ly has been a star, done an incredible job. >> in the cabinet, president trump goes after attorney general jeff sessions. >> i am disappointed in the attorney general. >> republicans push back. >> if jeff sessions is fired, there will be holy hell to pay. >> this morning an inside look at how president trump operates from his former campaign manager,ps, the republican heal care effort goes belly up with a thumbs down from john mccain. t sabotage obamacare. >> i said from the beginning, let implode and then

do it. let obamacare implode. >> will president trump try to push obamacare over the edge? i'll ask hhs secretary tom price collins, one of the republican no votes. and red/blue divide. candidate trump broke down the democrats' midwestern blue wall. is it still holding, and could we be seeing cracks in the republican southern red wall. joining me for insight and analysis are hugh huewitt, helee cooper, democratic pollster and nbc news political analyst cornecor cornell belcher and iliana johnson. welcome to sunday, it's "meet the press." celebrating its 70th year, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning. pick your cliche of choice. the wheels came off the bus,

circular firing squad, pressing the reset button. with the effective sacking of both his press secretary and his chief of staff in a seven-day span, president trump did little to blunt the idea that his is a white house in a perpetual state of chaos. as of this morning, the notable got you a departures include acting attorney general sally yates, national security advisor mike flynn, fbi director james comey, communications director mike dubke, sean spicer, then on friday, reince priebus. not to mention the public trashing and cyberbullying of attorney general jeff sessions who does still have a job. that means president trump is now on his second chief of staff, second communications director, second national security advisor and second press secretary and it's day 192. now throw in a public display of infighting by the new communications director, anthony scaramucci, so vulgar we can't even hint at some of the things that were said and the

dominos-like collapse of the republican efforts to repeal obamacare was the exclamation point. voters say they chose president trump to shake up washington and end business as usual. on that score at least the president has certainly delivered. but to what end? >> reince is a good man. john kelly will do a fantastic job. general kelly has been a star. >> president trump ended a week of bitter infighting, dysfunction and a major legislative defeat with a very conventional washington move. a white house staff shakeup. >> i think it's a good time to hit the reset button. i think he was right to hit the reset button. >> retired four-star marine general john kelly replaces priebus after just 189 days in office. >> john kelly is one of our great stars. >> it's an attempt to bring order to a west wing which even rupert murdoch's "new york post" compared to the reality show "survivor." in a profane rant to "the new yorker" on wednesday night, mr. trump's new communications

director called priebus an expletive paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoic. >> some brothers are like cain and abel. if reince wants to explain he's not a leaker, let him do that. >> i'm not going to get into the mud on those sorts of things. >> but it's unclear whether kelly will be given the authority to rein in chaos, which emanates from the president himself. this week the president repeatedly attacked his own attorney general. >> i am disappointed in the attorney general. he should not have recused himself. >> if jeff sessions is fired, there will be holy hell to pay. >> priebus' ouster came just hours after the colossal failure of the republicans' best hope for a policy success, and priebus was playing point for the white house. senator john mccain joined senators susan collins and lisa murkowski to defeat an already watered-down bill that didn't repeal the law, it was only going to repeal the mandate. dealing a blow to senate

republicans' hopes of passing something, anything. >> this is a disappointment. >> and denying the president a critical legislative win. >> secretary tom price is also here. by the way, you going to get the votes? he better get them. oh, he better -- otherwise i'll say, "tom, you're fired." >> well, joining me now is that tom from atlanta, the secretary of health and human services, tom price. secretary price, welcome back to the show, sir. >> hey, chuck. thanks. good to be with you. >> you still have a job. i assume the president was a little bit tongue in cheek. but let me ask you, start there, ask yourself this, what could you have done differently? i'm sure you're asking yourself that, considering what happened this past week. what could you have done differently to have a different outcome? >> well, i think what the president has explained and punctuates is his seriousness about this issue and his passion for turning the health care system in a direction that puts patients first, not government and not insurance companies.

we've all got a lot of work to do. we continue to work with members of the united states senate. we look forward to continuing to work with them and our house partners as well to make certain that we move this health care system in that better direction where patients and families and doctors are in charge, not washington, d.c. >> you know, it's interesting, there was a headline this morning in "the washington post" that i'm curious if you accept the premise of. the headline was simple, it's not obamacare anymore, it's our national health care sym. attem to repeal the affordable care act as we know it are dead and now your job and the job of republicans is to make this system work better? >> well, no, i don't accept the premise because we don't have a health care system. we've got about five health care systems. you've got medicare for seniors who are low income or vulnerable or disabled, you've got the employer-sponsored coverage where most individuals in this nation, about 175 million, get their coverage.

you've got the va system and ndividual small group market where obamacare focused its attention on setting up the exchanges. and it's that area where we've seen absolute failure. we've got 40% of the counties in this nation that only have one issue or one insurance company providing coverage, so that's no choice at all. next year you'll have dozens of counties that have nobody offering coverage. so this system is imploding, it is failing. and the president's passion, our passion, our concern is to make certain that we put in place a system that actually works for patients. >> look, you were an elected official. you know how politics works. you know how to count votes. you know where the votes are. it's pretty clear a full repeal can't be done. it's pretty clear somehow rescinding the medicaid expansion, that the support is not there. so what's realistic? what do you ask congress to do now? what is one thing that you want congress to do right now that's doable, that's realistic? that can help you implement the affordable care act better? >> well, what we want congress

to do is to go home and talk to their constituents. talk to the families out there that are losing their coverage. talk to the families who are making $50,000 a year and have an insurance card through obamacare but they don't have any care because they can't afford the deductible, talk to the small businesses that are having to end their health care coverage for their employees because of the rules coming from obamacare, talk to the large businesses who are having huge challenges affording the health coverage for their employees. this is a system that is imploding and has failed the american people. that's where the president's passion comes from. that's where my passion comes from, to move us in a direction that we actually put in place a system that works for patients, works for the american people. >> all right. with all due respect, you gave me an explanation of what you'd like to see but you didn't give me a specific. i want to ask you about a specific that the president tweeted about. he said this yesterday. if the new health care bill is not approved quickly, bailouts for insurance companies and bailouts for members of congress

will end very soon. now, he appears to be referring to these payments that your department has been making monthly. and i know there is some legal questions about whether this has been appropriated by the legislative branch or not. but the insurance companies have said this month-to-month reimbursement of propping up the insurance markets is creating more uncertainty and they would like to see some yearly -- yearly certainty there. can you say for certain that the -- all of these insurance payments are going to be made every single month while the affordable care act is law? >> well, chuck, as you know and your viewers know, this is a case that's in court and the case is house v. price, so i'm the defendant in that and, therefore, i can't talk about it. what i can tell you, though, is that the court has made a decision that those payments were made illegally, and that's working its way through the court system and it will. but again, what the president wants us to appreciate and wants everybody across this land to

appreciate is that the system is being propped up in a way that makes it so it's not working for people. it's not working for those small businesses. it's not working for those families across this land. it's not working for patients. it's not working for physicians who are trying to care for those patients. so we're trying to put in place, trying to get a system that actually does work for patients and families and doctors so they're making decisions, not washington, d.c. >> do you feel it is your job at hhs to implement the affordable care act as it was meant to be or are you there to -- some people think you don't want to see it work so that's why we've seen cancelled tv advertising, the attempts to not get people to enroll, the cancelling of contracts that help with enrollment, and so some of the cues that you do not want to see it work as it was intended. can you explain? >> yeah. no, our job is to follow the law of the land. and we take that mission very, very seriously. and the role of the health and

human services department is to improve the health, the safety and the well-being of the american people. and what we understand, what the american people understand is that their health and well-being is being harmed right now by the current law. and so our goal is to make -- is to put in place as well as the president's goal, is to put in place a law, a system that actually works for patients. you can't do that under the current structure. you can't do that just with regulation. it requires an act of congress. that's why the president has been so passionate about making certain that the congress of the united states repeals and replaces obamacare. >> but secretary price, i understand that. but it's clear the votes aren't there. so if they come up with a fix that helps essentially gives some certainty to the insurance companies to go into rural markets, are you then going to implement the affordable care act as it was meant to be, including encouraging people to sign up, encouraging enrollment, encouraging medicaid expansion? >> well, our -- as i said, our responsibility is to follow the law. and again, we take that

responsibility seriously and we will continue to do so. but remember that the current law right now is failing the american people. as i mentioned, we've got 40 counties that will no longer have any insurance company next year. that's not a choice for anybody. you've got a third of the counties right now that only have one insurance company providing coverage. that's not a choice for anybody. you've got premiums that are up, deductibles that are up, people having that insurance card and no care, you've got insurers fleeing the market. 83 insurance companies fled the health insurance market last year. that's before this administration came in. this system is imploding upon itself and that's what we're trying to take care of. that's what the president has said. that's why we need repeal and replace. >> secretary price, i'm going to have to leave it there. i appreciate you coming on and sharing your views, sir. >> thanks so much. joining me now is one of the republican senators who consistently voted against her party's health care bills, the various repeal and replace

aumg options. it's susan collins. senator collins, welcome back to the show. >> thank you, chuck. >> let me ask you this, one of the same questions i asked secretary price. do you accept the premise that the efforts to repeal obamacare are fully dead and it is now time to refer to this as our national health care system and it is his job and your job to make it work? >> i don't accept the premise that we should not proceed to reform the law. there are some very well problems in the law, secretary price is right about that and he identified them. the problem is that congress as my friend and colleague lamar alexander has often said does not do comprehensive well. what we need to do is to go through the normal process, identify the problems, have hearings, hear from experts, hear from all the stakeholders, and produce a series of bills to

fix the real flaws in the affordable care act. first on my list would be to stabilize the insurance markets to make sure that people access to insurance. >> are you confident, though, that secretary price at hhs is implementing -- is trying to keep this law afloat, that is doing everything he can to create certainty, or are you concerned that there are some aspects of hhs implementation right now that are actually undermining the law, attempting to create more problems in order to, say, force congress to act? >> i'm troubled by the uncertainty that has been created by the administration when it comes to the subsidies that are given to very low income people to help them with their co-pays and their deductibles. i hear this described by some as an insurance company bailout.

that's not what it is. it is vital assistance to people who make between 100% and 250% of the poverty level and allows them to afford their out of pocket costs. the uncertainty about whether that subsidy is going to continue from month to month is clearly contributing to the destabilization of the insurance markets. and that's one thing that congress needs to end. we need to make very clear that that subsidy is important to those very low-income people and we need to appropriate the money to ensure that it continues. >> do you think senator mcconnell needs to give up the reconciliation aspect of trying to deal with health care, that he should pledge, okay, i'm done trying to jam health care through in this way. the process is back to the regular order. are you there not only

encouraging that but will you tell senator mcconnell your vote will never be there for him on any of these reconciliation health care bills until he opens up the process? >> i've made very clear that i believe we would produce far better legislation if we went through the normal process of having committee hearings, hearing from health care providers, from insurance regulators, from advocacy groups, from governors, from everyone involved and then produce bipartisan legislation with input from both democrats and republicans. that's how we get the best legislation and that is the best path forward to mix the very real flaws that democrats and republicans alike see in the affordable care act. so that's the path that i want to take and that means not going through reconciliation but going through the normal committee processes. i've been urging all along and

senator john mccain urged in his very eloquent speech on the senate floor. >> it was something -- you were quoted this week in another report as saying that while vice president pence lobbied you and some other administration officials lobbied you that you didn't really hear from the president. when was the last time you heard from the president on health care? >> well, i do want to make clear that the president invited me to the two meetings at the white house to talk about health care. at the first meeting where i was seated next to him, he certainly did encourage my support for the bill. that was a few weeks ago. and he asked my opinion on what we could do on a reinsurance pool, which i am particularly interested in to preserve coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and lowering premiums. but most of the input that i've had from the white house has been from the vice president and

from the administrator of the medicare/medicaid programs. >> there were a lot of side shows this week. one of them had to do with a hot mic moment that caught you and senator reed talking about the threat that a republican member of congress made at you. let me -- but there was another portion of the tape that you have not referenced at all. here it is. >> yes, i think he's -- i think he's crazy. and i -- i don't say that. >> no, lightly. >> lightly as kind of, yeah, you know, a goofy guy. >> you appear to be referencing the president there with senator reed. can you expound upon that a little bit. how concerned are you about the president? >> actually what i was talking about is the president's budget. if you go earlier in that tape, i talk about the fact that omb went through the budget and

appeared to zero out many really vital programs without doing a careful analysis of the impact on communities, on vulnerable citizens, on veterans, on people across the united states. so when i said i'm worried, that's what i was referring to. i was referring to the president's budget, and i am worried about the president's budget. as omb has put it forth, i think there are a lot of problems in it. >> and finally, there's been some speculation that the president may ask attorney general jeff sessions to replace john kelly as secretary of homeland security, but that would essentially be throwing him out of the department of justice. would you support a move like that or would you attempt to block a move like that? >> well, obviously it's up to the president whom he wants to have where in his cabinet, but let me say this. the attorney general made absolutely the right decision to

recuz himself from the russian investigation. he consulted with the career staff and he followed the exact guidelines of the justice department. so for him to be criticized for the decision to remove himself from the investigation, i just don't think is right. >> so you would not support any attempt to move jeff sessions to dhs? >> it's up to jeff sessions and the president, but if he's being moved because of his correct decision to recuse himself, i think that's a mistake. i do think that general kelly will do a good job as the white house chief of staff. i think he will bring some order and discipline to the west wing. >> all right, senator susan collins, a republican from maine joining us from bangor. i want to prove to my friends in maine that i do know how to pronounce the city's name correctly. senator, thanks for coming on. thank you for sharing your views. >> thank you. we appreciate that. when we come back, those

dramatic last moments when the republican health care rewrite efforts went down to defeat at the hands of senator john mccain. and later, what we found out when we asked journalists, commentators and regular voters how they think president trump is doing so far at six months. here's a sample. >> the tone of our politics today really is degraded by the kind of leadership the white house has had. >> if he's making changes, i'll be their experience is coveted. their leadership is instinctive. they're experts in things you haven't heard of - researchers of technologies that one day, you will. some call them the best of the best. some call them veterans. we call them our team.

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well, we are back. panel the here. hugh hewitt, host of the salem radio network, eliana johnson and nbc news political analyst, democratic pollster cornell belcher. welcome all. i want to start by watching the dramatic moment on thursday night when senator john mccain sank the last gasp so-called skinny repeal of health care. it's like watching, perhaps if you're on the right side of the aisle, it's like watching the seahawks throw that interception in the super bowl, but here it is. you see john mccain going up to get the attention of the clerk, get the attention of the clerk. and then you hear the gasps when they see the thumbs down. you have elizabeth warren there clapping. look at mitch mcconnell's sullen look and cassidy, thune, rubio, they're all sort of sunken

there. you didn't need words to know what happened there, hugh hewitt. this is a defeat that has a lot of mothers and fathers, is there not? >> yes, it's an ernest byner fumble if i use my analogy. three republicans voted for the status quo, senators collins, murkowski and mccain. the status quo is not working. but this was a decision to stand pat. there isn't regular order. people's medical situations do not wait for the regular order of the senate. and i think unless and until they decide that they have got to get to conference to take in the best expert opinion and fix this, they're not serious and the senate isn't serious. mcconnell and mccain have been going around for years. this goes back before trump. it was mcconnell who brought down mccain-feingold. >> but a bill doesn't become a law bypass whatever you can and then write it -- >> that's actually regular

order. >> that's not how it should happen. senator mccain was right. senator mccain said he wasn't going to vote for this law as it was. not my conservative senator from south carolina, very red state, this as policy is a disaster. what is unbelievable is that quite frankly you had so many repuanknew was a disaster and ne of them wanted it to become law. if americans want to understand why their politics is broke, look at what happened in the senate when you had republican senator after republican senator voting for something none of them wanted to become law. look, the secretary stayed on message, right? it's a failure, it's imploding, it's a failure, it's hurting people. truth of the matter is, as big a failure as they make it out to be, it has never been more popular. more people are trying to get aca and for the first time aca is actually above water right now. people -- this is important. we can't take this away from people. we have to come to regular order and try to fix this. >> eliana. >> i do think that for the first

time you really saw -- we really saw trump's influence on the party. repeal was never on the table. calling this repeal is a joke. and i think you could really see in the senator procedure trump, he's a man who likes victory, he likes process, he likes the signing ceremony. that really seemed to be the senate's goal here. let's just sign something. nobody thought this bill was good. trump is ideological fractured the republican party and i think that is what broke the senate bill. they could not bridge the gap between conservative senators who really wanted repeal and moderates who never really made it clear what it was that they wanted. i'm still not clear on what moderate senators, what the outcome was that they wanted. >> helene, bringing up the president's role here, he tried an intimidation tactic against lisa murkowski that woefully ba backfired. >> that went poorly. >> everything has been his way of cajoling. there's a nail, i'm a hammer,

pound. he did it yesterday by taunting mitch mcconnell. there's no soft sell with donald trump, it's all hard. >> it's so perplexing to me because it sort of seems to me maybe he's not so great at the art of the deal. this is somebody who sent ryan zinke to call lisa murkowski and threaten her, the state of alaska. that's how -- in what way given how powerful she is and her political standing in alaska, how did he think that was going to go over? i mean that just made no sense to me. but one of the things that i've been sort of struck with during this whole on again/off again debate that we've been going back and forth, and that's like taking aside the politics, there was a really good story on friday just about the patients and the people who use -- who are in the exchange and who use obamacare and what they have been going through watching this congressional debate. one day obamacare is declared alive and the next day -- and

people are stockpiling medicine, they're like doing major surgeries before they were supposed to be scheduled, and i just keep trying to put myself in the mind of somebody whose health or the health of their child is on the line as these political she nnanigans are goi on. i think that is probably one of the most disgraceful things about the way the senate and the way congress has handled this. >> tim phillips, president of the koch brothers network, americans for prosperity, said this is an epic failure by republicans but it's time to pivot to tax reform. there's no good time to pivot. hugh, can republicans stop and say oh, well, we tried. >> they can't for the reason helene just said. people's health care is collapsing in small and large ways. premiums are skyrocketing. i had a minor injury. i've been to the emergency room, two doctors and two rounds of antibiotics over a month. it's cost me $650 out of pocket. i can afford that.

most americans can't. they can't do that, the system is broken. cornell that's why getting to the conference committee was important so they could begin fixing the regular order of which susan collins speaks and of which the constitution doesn't detail other than house and senate getting to a conference is going to kill people if they don'that if the been gone and voted for the skinny bill. wasn't that a worry, you sent it to conference -- >> status quo is worse than that. >> hugh, would you give me this and this is where it breaks down. there's a majority in both the house and the senate who would get together and fix this. it's not a majority of the majority, though, and that'slemt >> you might be right, you might be right. and there is a graham-heller alternative out there. >> and you're not getting tax help on this, but we can fix this but not by the same rules of a majority of a majority. >> i've got to pause that conversation there because i don't think we're going to fix it.

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welcome back. there are very few people who have a better sense of what life is like in president trump's orbit than my next guest. corey lewandowski was candidate trump's first campaign manager. and despite having his own run-in at the time, he actually still remains close to the president. corey lewandowski joins me now from his home state of new hampshire. mr. lewandowski, welcome to "meet the press." >> thanks, chuck. great to be with you today. >> let me start with a little bit we'll call it sunday morning quarterbacking here. wokt wrong for reince priebus as chief of staff? what went wrong with that relationship in your opinion? >> part of it, obviously, is that the president wants to bring a new direction. and what that means is making sure his legislative agenda gets done. and what's very important to the president is fulfilling the campaign promises which he outlined. we saw this week a legislative defeat in congress for the repeal and replace of obamacare and that's something that he

campaigned on. reince was brought in, as you know, as someone who could work with the members of the house and the senate to get that legislative agenda done. with that not being accomplished, the president made new direction to bring a seriousness to his chief of staff and a pivot so that he can have his agenda at the forefront of what he wants to get done. >> given that reince priebus an very close, you were -- you had a front row seat to that at times. the tense relationship between when he was chairman at the rnc and your campaign and with candidate trump. in hindsight was it a mistake for the president to hire somebody he wasn't personal lly very close to? >> i think what the president decided when he was president-elect and to bring reince onboard was to bring someone in to help him staff his team and achieve his legislative agenda. unfortunately where we are right now if you look at the ups and downs of the presidency so far, the single most important thing

the president has been able to achieve is getting neil gorsuch on the supreme court, a very important thing he's been able to achieve. but the major issues have not been accomplished in congress and he's decided to make a change at the top to move his agenda forward. >> and he believes that it's all reince priebus' fault? >> no, look -- >> that he doesn't have a major legislative victory, that that's at the feet of reince priebus. >> no, i wouldn't say that, chuck. what i would say is obviously the president has a very aggressive legislative agenda. repeal and replace of obamacare was at the top of the list. we're now moving to tax reform. we can double middle class deductions and cut taxes on small businesses. look, what you've got with general kelly coming in is someone who's bringing a fresh perspective, very important, and an opportunity to communicate the president's agenda to the staff inside the white house and work closely with those members of congress and the u.s. senate who want to get the president's agenda done, including building the wall on the southern border. i think the general should

relook at firing richard cordray, a person all but running for governor in the state of ohio and he's sitting in federal office right now. i think this general as the chief of staff is going to come in and put a fresh set of eyes on the inner workings of the white house and making sure the president's agenda corey, that was sort of a random thing you just introduced there. what's with the focus on mr. cordry? how is that at the top of the agenda there? >> i think there's three things on the agenda. it's tax reform, it's building a wall on the southern border, it's repeal and replace of obamacare which didn't get done. but i think richard cordray is campaigning now for governor of ohio. he's sitting inight now at the cfpb and it's my recommendation to the president of the united states to fire richard cordray. if he wants to go run for governor of ohio, go do it. but my concern is you've got an unelected bureaucrat sitting in an office right now and i hope the new chief of staff looks at him moving forward and say it's time to act decisively.

>> i have to ask this considering you brought this up. do you have any business interest here? do you have a client that wants eo se >> no, no. i have no clients whatsoever. what i do know is two weeks ago richard cordray passed a rule with the antithesis, it's a trillion dollars of arbitration the government will have to go through. he's an unelected official. he's all but announced that he's running for governor of ohio. if he wants to run for governor of ohio, go run for governor of ohio but don't do so when you're sitting in a federal office right now. >> here's how peter baker and maggie haberman wrote about anthony scaramucci, the new communications director and the reince priebus feud at the ours priebus was fired. the clash between mr. scaramucci and mr. priebus offers a case study in how the trump white house operates, a conflict divorced from facts, untethered government works, enabled by the lack of any organizational structure, and driven by ambition, fear, animosity and

envy. you may disagree with some of the tone of that, but there is consensus that the president does like a little bit of chaos. how does john kelly limit that chaos and how does the president chaos?ially limit himself from >> i think general kelly is going to restore order to the staff. his title is chief of staff, not chief of the president. and what you have seen over the last 30 years is an unbelievably successful individual and everything that he has achieved. the ideas that he's brought to the presidency have been something he's talked about for a long time. what we need now from a chief of staff is ensuring that everybody who works on the white house is on the president's agenda. what i would guess moving forward is that general kelly will bring the type of discipline to the staff, to ensure that the leaks are stopped and that the president's agenda is foremost of what takes

place in that building. so there will be no more back biting, no more stabbing each other in the back. what anthony scaramucci has said is that he's the type of person who if he wants to stab, he'll stab you in the front. what i think general kelly wants to bring is the opportunity to make sure that everybody on the staff is working for the goodn agenda. >> last quick question, is there one thing that john kelly should avoid doing as president trump's chief of staff? >> absolutely. the thing that general kelly try to change donald trump. chuck, as you know, i've said you have to let trump be trump. that is what has made him successful over the last 30 the voted for. anybody who thinks they're going to change donald trump doesn't know donald trump. >> i think that's a good place to end. corey lewandowski, thanks for coming on the show. appreciate you coming on and sharing your views, when we presidential candidate donald trump won by breaching the democrats' midwestern blue wall. democrats' midwestern blue wall. six months into his l holding u♪

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welcome back. data download time. barely a week goes by without president trump talking about his great electoral map victory, even in a speech to the boy scouts. so how does that electoral map look six months into the trump presidency? thanks to some state level polling analysis from gallup, we can take a look. so where is the president's support still rock solid? based on gallup's daily tracking polls from january 20th through june 30th, the most favorable states for the president were west virginia, north dakota and wyoming. his net approval in those three states is in the 20s. what do these places have in common besides voting for trump by big margins in november? they're all rural, fossil fuel-producing states with not a lot of racial or ethnic diversity. put those pieces together and you have the underpinnings of trump country. maybe a bit surprising, some of the toss-up states president trump pulled in last november still look relatively good for him. in two cases, ohio and iowa. while his approval is somewhat

underwater, it's not by much. better in those places than we might expect. remember, in the post 2000 era these are states that have voted republican at least once before trump. still, he is doing better in those states than he is in some traditionally red states from the past. in fact his net approval is negative 7 points in georgia and negative 9 in both texas and arizona. these are states that no republican presidential candidate has lost at least since 2000 but demographically their populations are growing and they are racially and ethically diversifying. they could be part of a coming realignment. finally, it does look like the great blue wall that the trump campaign successfully cracked in november may be starting to reassemble. the president is struggling in pennsylvania, michigan and wisconsin, he's underwater by 9 and 10 points in those states respectively, states that won him the presidency back in november, but performing more poorly there than in neighboring iowa or ohio. each of those three blue states voted blue in every election since 2000 and trump won them by

a total of 77,000 votes. look, we're in the midst of a political realignment but how quickly this shift happens is something to watch. if you look at this as a snapshot the 2020 map could be looking very different than the 2016 map we're all starting to get used to. when we come back, journalists and everyday voters weigh in on donald trump' presidency so far. >> donald trump could have been a successful president. he had -- his party had control of both houses of congress, and yet he's accomplished almost nothing. >> i think with him god has ♪ new charmin ultra soft! it's softer than ever. new charmin ultra soft is twice as absorbent so you can use less. and it's softer than ever... so it's harder to resist.

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we'll replace the full value of your car. liberty mutual insurance. welcome back. simple question, has donald trump been a successful president? is he on his way to being one? journalists generally agree mr. trump's six months have been the most chaotic in recent memory. does that matter to the voters? at this six-month point in the

trump presidency, we thought we'd reach out to a series of journalists, commentators and everyday voters. we went to kenosha, wisconsin, to talk to voters there and asked all of them if they think mr. trump has been successful thus far. >> the essence of leadership is to set the tone for the country and how it's governed. >> a president is successful when he or she some day has a vision. >> if president trump builds a wall and doesn't get us involved in any more pointless middle east wars he will go down as the greatest president in my lifetime. >> successful presidents are people that the american public can trust. >> i think with him god has given this country a second chance to redeem itself. >> mike trout of the los angeles angels is 25 but he's so good if he quit today he'd be ft hall of fame. donald trump has only served six months but he's in the running for worst president of all time.

>> i tesident trump to realize that he is the president to everyone in this country. >> in the eyes of the people who voted for donald trump, he's a very successful president. they sent him there to shaes t the hour, by the tweet. >> what little he has done has seemed to be motivated very much by fear and by hate. >> i think successful presidencies impact the ethos of the country. how people see themselves and how they see others. >> great leaders eat last. the best leader is the biggest servant of the lowest person on the ladder, not the one that gets the biggest cheer. >> you have to be focused, relentlessly toward a goal, and he clearly is not and his white house is not. >> i think at this stage the only fair answer is an incomplete. i don't think there's ever been a successful or unsuccessful president where you could have predicted for sure six months

in. >> i don't think he's worried about being re-elected. i think he's putting everything on the line to push his agenda without worrying about another term. >> donald trump never made the pivot to become president of the united states. >> you have to remember that harry truman left office, the universal judgment was that he was a failure. history has looked back now and decided that he was actually a very good president at that time. it's hard to see how donald trump gets to the end of four years where he reverses what appears to be his instincts to tweet and have chaos around him all the time. >> all right. now what do you guys think? eliana, every president has a reset moment. this reset moment is coming awfully early. >> it is. i disagree with what corey lewandowski said, who by the way is appearing at a fund-raiser august 3rd for a republican ohio gubernatorial candidate. >> now we know the motivation there. >> despite his claim he has no business interest in this.

but people voted for trump because they supported his agenda and let trump be trump. he wasn't hillary for many reasons. but the shakeup is coming early. reince priebus failed at his job interested in enactingpower him trump's agenda, he would have quit on the second day when he was undermined and incapable of doing it. general kelly, i think, hopefu do the job. he didn't tow the line in the obama administration, he spoke out against the policies at guantanamo. i think for that reason there's some hope that he will quit if he's not empowered to do his job, but those are the sorts of people i think this president should be hiring and who the at people who are going to speak out and quit their jobs if the president doesn't empower them to do them. >> you know, there was -- at th on friday that general kelly was going to be the next chief of staff, several people said,

well, you need this sort of four-sr these are men who know get things done, they know how to get people to follow orders andth a successful white house chief of staff, you've got to come with a little bit -- a lot of political know-how, and there i think we could see some issues general kelly. as a four-star general, he knows how to talk to congress, he knows how to appear on capitol hill and he knows how to schmooze, but there's lot more to that to this job. this is a job that is so down and dirty in the roman coliseum with gladiators from all different sides and trying to gein line. i'm just a little bit -- i love to see general kelly and scaramucci in their first meeting. i can't believe you haven't brought this up yet. >> i think we're all trying to gu scaramucci and kelly. >> it's so easy to be a partisan hack here. look, the power of the white

house matters, right, and when you look at what's happening dos become dangerous, right? you know, when is the white house becoming a locker room become problematic, ri the glob to respect the white house and the white house is shrinking and being diminished. that is a problem for us around the globe when our -- when our allies don't think that they can respect to negotiator talk with a locker room. that's the problem that's happening right tonal. it is about diminishing the white house. when you see scaramucci and those guys behave that way, it makes the white house a smaller place. >> my analogy, not coliseum, not locker room, chp had a series "deadwood" and i think reince priebus was doc cochran and now bullock, but that general swearington and cy are still running the place and the legislature, who is donald trump, has no idea whas going on. the most important enter enter

last week was andrea mitchell talking with general dunford. we have a war cabinet right now of general kelly, jim mattis, joe dufford, mike pompeo, tom cotton is the president's favorite senator. there's a huge story in the background and a very competent team, but the deadwood shooting has to stop. >> i think some people worry it's not deadwood, it's quentin tarantino. anyway, before we go to break. this evening on "sunday night with megyn kelly" kate snow is doing a report on whether talc may increase the risk of ovarian cancer. an important study worth watching tonight. that of course is tonight at 7:00/6:00 central on nbc. we're back in 45 seconds with end game and something we never thought we'd hear. coming up, end game brought to you by boeing. continuing our mission to continuing our mission to - if i told you the number of books in your home

determines how well your child reads later, you'd probably start reading more, right? well, i just told you. what're you waiting for? the more you know. >> announcer: end game brought to you by boeing. continuing our mission to connect, protect, explore and inspire. back now with "end game."

i bet are you going to talk about the boy scouts, about this speech before the police department. >> transgender, don't forget that. >> that's what we're talking about here. >> oh! >> is the president's transgender position. thank you, producer helene cooper. what was amazing was the republican pushback on the directive, not from the joni ernsts of the world. john mccain, richard shelby, lisa murkowski, senator tillis, orrin hatch, among the republican senators who pushed back and said no, no, no, this is a mistake, don't do it. but listen to orrin hatch. he personalized it in a way that you might not expect. >> but i've said, look, people who are transgender, they don't choose to be transgender. they're born that way. and why should we hold that against them? >> sea change from what's been happening in the republican party. if you go back eight, nine years ago and listen to what republicans were saying,

conser conservatives about this, it was a wedge issue. god bless america, we have changed sides. >> i think it's a huge wedge issue. i think donald trump is a traditional its in a strange body, the body of a manhattan millionaire. and i think -- i do think that middle america -- donald trump, isaiah berlin, hedge hog and the fox. donald trump is the fox. he understood one big thing and it's the cultural estrangement of middle america from the eastern elites. the eastern elites are the republican senators whose views have changed on these things too. it's a bipartisan issue. >> interesting way to put it. we will leave it there. thank you, producer cooper. that's all for today. thanks for watching. guess what, not only are we back next week but every single sunday for the rest of the year. no more preemgss, i promise. because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press."