we are covering it all here from philadelphia with kasie hunt in philly, kristen welker at the white house, hans nichols at the pentagon. we were just listening to that press conference. you were in there and there were some interesting moments, right? walk us through them. >> hallie, that's right. this of course has been a little bit of an uncomfortable retreat so far with congressional leaders here wanting to talk about their big priorities, repealing the health care law, reforming and rewriting the u.s. tax code. those are the things they want to be talking about. donald trump of course has had other plans. he instead has signed a slew of executive orders, some of which have put him at odds with congressional leaders here. he also has been talking about voter fraud in the election, which is another subject that republicans in congress would like to move past. i asked leader mcconnell and speak aer ryan about the discrepancy at the beginning of the press conference. >> we're going to be hearing from the president today. we've been working on a daily basis to map out and plan an age

nbc's kasie hunt is at the white house. kasie, what kind of guidance are you getting from administration officials about the nature of these calls, especially the one at noon to russia? >> reporter: a lot of focus today on that call to vladimir putin. you already have republican members of congress raising concerns about whether president trump is going to relieve those sanctions that former president obama put on russia over russian meddling in the u.s. election. so that's what to watch from that call today. but in the meantime, there's increasing backlash over that executive order that president trump signed yesterday that temporarily bans immigrants from certain countries. there are reports this morning that people with iraqi and other passports were not allowed to board an egyptair flight from cairo to new york because of concerns about this new executive order. now, nbc news is still working to confirm those reports. this policy president trump calls extreme vetting, but critics say it amounts to a ban on all muslims.

. >> let's start this hour with kasie hunt and hans nichols, both on capitol hill. what did we learn today about the house republican plan for the affordable care act? >> reporter: well, one thing i want to point out to you, craig, and the word is subtle, but paul ryan called it relief from the health care law. that's a little bit of a change from their aggressive, straightforward repeal and replace. what you heard in those tweets from donald trump earlier today, a warning to republicans, hey, democrats own this and so the question now is what are republicans going to do? they want to repeal it. it only takes 51 votes in the senate. the trick is putting it back and there are 20 million people who now have health insurance who didn't before this law was passed and who are benefiting from it. yes, there are people paying higher premiums and higher deductibles and feel they are suffering under this law. but there are potential consequences if they don't replace it with something. that's what president obama is here to talk to democrats about. he said sort of in marchin

. >> kasie, hang on a minute. ken, vladimir putin was a specter hanging over today's hearing.ake a listen to this exchange. >> who is the highest level of government? >> the highest is president putin. >> you think a lot happens in russia that he doesn't know about? >> not really. certainly none their political sensitive in another country. >> the president-elect has doubted the conclusion that points at russian involvement, or at least the involvement of russian senior sources. ken, what can you tell us about the report that is detailing the evidence that some people are getting briefed on as we speak? >> well, ali, this is a report that's going to attempt to del a story that's been gathered over many months, about what clapper is calling a covert action, more than acting, active measures, fake news, a whole panoply of effort. there are three versions of this report, the most highly classified to president obama, the next went to president-elect. the next will go to congressional committees, and declassified will be made public, presumably on monday. will they be able to decl

msnbc political correspondent kasie hunt watching the tom price hearing. about the congressman under fire over some of his stock purchases. democrats really fired up about this. talk to us about what's going on. >>. >> that's right, hallie. democrats are very, very focused on this.

kasie, what's -- do people even know him on the hill? been to washington and made the rounds there. >> you saw him walking through capitol hill yesterday. he's started to have those meetings. there are some people on the hill who have gotten phone calls from him. remember, kushner was given some credit for helping to make sure mike pence got that vp slot. of course, pence is somebody who a lot of these members have very close ties to, so there's been some introductions going that way. but they are still kind of just beginning to get into this, i think. i'm interested to know when kind of role kushner does play on capitol hill, if he is this person who can start to pick up the phone. he is the one who had nice things to say about chuck schumer at an event in new york. he said my father-in-law might be closer to chuck schumer than mitch mcconnell from a personal perspective. i think there's a lot of opportunity there. one question, do democrats go after potential conflicts of interest on this. the trump team is being very aggressive trying

kasie, you're one of. first to ask a question. what do they have to say?hi, steph, good morning. in news conference from leader mcconnell and speaker ryan aimed at showing that republicans are all on the same page. i ask them if they have differences and they of course want to talk about their priorities, repealing the health care law and tax reform while donald trump's executives orders have been uncomfortable for a lot of them to talk about. there are issues to work through on some of these other issues. a big one, torture, those enhanced interrogation techniques that president trump says he wants to revisit. >> i think the director of the cia has made it clear he's going to follow the law and i believe virtually all of my members are comfortable with the state of the law on that issue now. >> and torture's illegal. torture is not legal. and we agree with it not being legal. >> pretty straight forward answer on that, speaker ryan saying he agrees with torture being not legal. some other things we learned, there's a lot of discomfort around paying for tha

kasie, i hope you had your wheatty this is morning. there are three confirmation hearings to take place in just the next hour. tell me about them. >> reporter: this is a big day for trump's nominees on capitol hill. there are two in particular, three nominees total set for drilling by members of congress but i want to focus on congressman tom price and congressman mick mulvaney. we have heard from price already. he had a tough te at h first hearing talking about stock trades he made around medical stocks that may have been influenced by legislation he was sponsoring at the time so democrats accusing him of conflicts of interest. the trump transition -- no longer transition, the trump administration pushing back against that, of course, mick mulvaney also dealing with ethical issues that cropped up during this confirmation hearing around unpaid taxes for a person who worked in his household, a babysitter he and his wife hired after he had triplets. chuck schumer had a conversation with donald trump during the inaugural lunch here at the

. >> kasie hunt has been following the votes all day on capitol hill. we'll start with you. walk us through this vote right now, is paul ryan expecting the republican conference to vote in unison or will there be defections here? there's been battling how best to go about it. >> reporter: there is a little bit of behind the scenes drama on capitol hill today because there are some republicans worried about how they're going about this for a couple of different reasons. this of course is a bill from the senate, it's a blueprint that lays the groupndwork to allow republicans to repeal the health care law with just 51 votes in the senate. it's a budget blueprint. they would be able to repeal the health care law with only republican votes, but there's some concerns. there are moderate republicans here on the house side who are worried about the fact that this does not take any steps toward replacing the health care law, and that's a significant issue for a lot of these members, who are worried that it might cause significant political problems back home, if they dismantle this w

kasie hunt joins us now. one of the best sort of commentaries i have heard about donald trump and in his election victory, what it represented, it was essentially an independent candidate staging a takeover of the republican party, meaning he ran on some issues republicans are traditionally comfortable with but also introduced new issues that are not traditional republican issues. when he showed up today with the congressional republicans and laid out what his agenda is going to be, what were they comfortable with and what did they have reservations about? >> reporter: steve, part of this, i think, is that there is a general culture clash between donald trump and his politics and personality and the gop conference in the house and senate as we have known it. they are simply, you know, very different personality-wise. that's part of why you're seeing trump bonding with chuck schumer than the other republicans. trump's speech today was well received because he steered clear or almost clear of a lot of the notes

i want to turn to kasie hunt to help me understand, what is congress doing here, kasie? >> reporter: hey, steph. we're talking about the office of congressional ethics. it was an office that was created after a series of scandals in congress. you may remember jack abramoff and his lobbying scandal. one of several that prompted democrats who took back the house in 2008 to run on this drain the swamp idea and put this office in place. and there's already a house ethics committee, but the knock on them had always been that basically they never took very much action. they were quicker to bury wrong doink, and that something else needed to be done. a lot ofhese other scandals had been found out or criminally investigated. it wasn't coming from the house itself. so this was a move to try to say, okay, we're going to make sure we hold our members accountable. we're going to make an independent panel. it's bipartisan. it's out of the hands of members of congress. and we're going to let them investigate. so in the intervening years, it's come to be a source of great frustration f

>> thank you, kasie. >>> senator rand paul is a republican from kentucky. he's also a medical doctor putting forward his own obamacare replacement plan. and he was at today's hearing for congressman price. nice to see you. >> thanks for having me. >> before we get to the hearing today, and to your plan, i've thought president obama, at his press last conference, any thought as president obama leaves office? >> you know, i enjoyed working with him and tried to work with him on the areas that i agreed with and i think i see some of that as we go into a new administration that's republican, i see some on the other side aren't too happy to be working with a republican. i actually did try to work with him when i could, criminal justice reform, he and i agreed with on a lot of things and tried to be supportive on that. on a lot of other things we didn't agree but i tried to keep it on an agreeable sort of disagreement. >> you mentioned the new administration. are you ready for a president donald trump? >> yeah. i think that we've gone too far. the whole pendulum

so is my colleague kasie hunt coming to us from, where else, the acela? you're on the acela and not a regional. you have a captive audience with you. a bunch of lawmakers heading up to philadelphia for the retreat. what do you have? >> so we tried to get on the chartered -- it's a regional train that members of congress are on. republican members of congress are on. alas they would not allow us to travel in their closed train compartments so we got on the neighboring acela heading up to philadelphia for this retreat. we saw they all came through the amtrak station. a lot of sweaters and kids. this is a casual affair, this retreat they do. although not really this year. it's a really intense period of time for republicans on capitol hill. a lot of them are, you know, we've been talking about just how much has happened in the last 72 to 48 hours. members of congress are feeling that exact same way. every day, every hour even, they are grapple with a new set of questions. in the case of republicans on their way to disretreat, a lot of them facing tough quest

kasie? >> reporter: that's right, andrea, as you heard there, there's a fundamental disagreement around the facts of what happened, between democrats and republicans on this question. this is something that was wildly known, has been wildly known for months. these trades took place in march of last year, and they're part of public disclosure documents that are available online, anyone can go take a look at them. but combined with the legislation that then moved through the senate and contributions from the pac for this company to tom price has raised these concerns. and now democrats are demanding that there be an investigation and delay here as you point out. at this point, there's no sign that republicans are going to cave to that pressure. the trump transition team adamantly insists that there was nothing that was done wrong here, that all of it was disclosed, all of it was aboveboard, and none of it causes a problem. and of cose, you heard the congressman tom price, disputing what he had

and kasie hunt is on capitol hill. pete, let's start with you on this. senator lee was just talking to our colleague craig melvin, and he called this relatively routine. would you call this routine? >> no, i don't think so. i mean, it's routine that the inspector general can look into the performance of justice and fbi officials, but this is a very wide-ranging list of things that michael horowitz has set for himself to do. he says he's doing this because of calls from members of congress, from the -- from the public, from various organizations to look into how this was handled. not the investigation and the prosecution, per se, but the way certain statements and announcements about it were made. so, these are the five things he says he'll look at. the allegations that policies and procedures weren't followed in how the fbi director made his announcement july 5th that said, we're not going to prosecute her, but being critical about hillary clinton's handling of e-mails. allegations that an fbi deputy director should not have been involved in certain inve

kasie hunt, let's look ahead to today.ld be another interesting day on capitol hill. >> for sure. a couple of hearings up today. the epa administrator scott pruitt is going to be one. you're going to want to keep an eye on. from some what you saw from betsy devos the tom price hearing and not a confirmation hearing but a courtesy appearance before the senate health committee. that is one you're going to want to watch. the administration has been dropping hints and talking at length about tom price's role in repealing the health care law. once they are able to get him confirmed, he'll be able to do a lot from the regulatory side and using his plan to write big chunks of their replacement piece and a place democrats have focused. a story a couple of days ago kind of over the weekend about some of his insider trading potentially in medical stocks. that is all about democrats trying to delay this as much as possible. they are really waging a political style campaign against tom price. i think you can expect to see some of that

. >> kasie hunt, does it look look it's a done deal with the senate does kick into session here? >> it lookinghat way sofar. we have a state in -- they'll be asking him whether or not vladimir putin is a war criminal because of what's happened in aleppo and syria, he was not able to say in the hearing whether putin was a war criminal. a lot of pressure was brought to bear on marco rubio on the part of the trump team. he met privately with rex ti tillerson last week. he had 100-plus written questions that tillerson answered in writing. now we're learning that marco rubio gave a statement "given the uncertainty that exists both at home and abroad about the direction of our foreign policy, it would be against the country's best interests to have the nomination delay. therefore, i will support mr. tillerson's nomination and in the full senate." we knew they were going to have a vote later this afternoon . >> kasie hunt, keeping an eye on all of it for us here on capitol hill, not too far from where we are posted up. thank you. i'm joined by congressman ron desennd desantis. there was

. >> msnbc's kasie hunt will be following all the action here on capitol hill as she always is. good morning to you. set the stage for us here. what do you expect at today's hearing for betsy devos? how controversial or how many fireworks do you think we'll see, if any? >> reporter: hi, hallie. forgive the noise here. there's a lot of construction under way here in the capitol. this is where they will have the traditional inaugural luncheon. what you're seeing are a couple tour groups but lot of construction. now, the political fireworks aren't going to start until later this afternoon over on the senate side when betsy devos' hearing kicks off. the hearing was delayed from last week because they were concerned about her financial filings because she is a billionaire. she and her husband are well known for working and putting a lot of money into the republican party where they are from and hoping move forward that state's law about charter schools and vouchers as well. they've worked on that issue. those are two things that very much concern people like randy weingart weingarten

. >> senator, kasie hunt.lot of energy on the streets right now for people who support you. but i have a very important question for you, who is the leader? who is the leader to capture all this? >> i think that's old time thinking to think you have to organize this in a pyramid with one person at the top. >> i'm not asking about a pyramid but who can actually take this and push it forward in a real way? >> let me tell you, i do think the democrats in the senate because we -- they don't give democrats in the house in minority many tools. it's just majority vote. joe knows this. if you're in the minority, the majority can steamroll you. >> we always tell people when they first come to the house, this is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship, top down, whoever is in charge. >> it's kind of the way it goes. in the senate we do have tools, filibuster, cloture, ability to slow things down, sometimes stop things and we're going to use all these tools. right now chuck schumer, the democratic senate leader is the most

kasie hunt is here with us. she looks like in a basement here waiting to talk to somebody. walk us through what we expect to see next week. we're seeing top intelligence officials we saw yesterday will appear before the senate intel committee, right? >> reporter: that's right. this closed meeting and officials are on their way to brief president-elect donald trump. one notable name in addition to john brennan, james clapper and mike rogers, the nsa director who woe also heard from, james comey, the fbi director, someone who we have not seen since before the election, his agency having some difficult involvement in this. obviously the clinton campaign very angry about the role he played in how this election played out. we're going to hear from them in public when the public version of this is released early next week so the public will be able to get a sense of what the government thinks went on with russia and the election. now, the question of course, how much are they going to reveal in the unclassified version of that report because they do want to protect sources and me

kasie hunt, nbc news, washington. >>> and chuck todd is moderator of "meet the press."ood morning. good to see you, my friend. >> good morning, sir. >> let's start with the most recent news, the immigration executive order from president trump, 120-day suspension of admission of all refugees, 90-day suspension from seven countries. a federal judge agreed on part of , how far this can go? the white house said in the last 24 hours they may broaden it further depending how things go. >> we'll see. i think there will be more legal challenges to this order. i think specifically the idea that this applies to green card holders is going to, i think, come under some debate in the federal courts, because when you get a green card in this country, you're supposed to have all the same rights as a citizen has, essentially, except for the ability to vote and serve on juries. and even in some places, you can serve on juries. so that, i think, is going to be the next target of legal action here. willie, i think it's just as likely that somehow in the next couple of weeks, just like wi

. >> drive into that, kasie.e're hearing from democrats, senator cain says he will support james mattis and oppose rex tillerson. senator merckly saying he's a no on tillerson. if marco rubio, senator rubio, ends up not opposing rex tillerson, does that mean sort of done deal for the trump transition, they can breathe a sigh of relief? >> reporter: look, i think your summary there is pretty good. look, jeff sessions is likely to have a vote that's relatively close because democrats are likely to be pretty unified in opposing him. you may see that be one of the closer votes but that doesn't necessarily mean he's in more danger than a rex tillerson. you want to wch the republican opposition. one this evening you want to wah rubio is what does he do in the committee. there's only one member difference between the republicans and democrats on the committee. they could send it to the full senate without tillerson being confirmed. if rubio did take that to the senate, his opposition and you saw a few more republicans d

but i'll get straight to this from a phone call that nbc's kasie hunt just has had with senator lindsey graham, and i'll read this to you first and then get your thoughts here, according to our transcript, senator lindsey graham telling kasie hunt i don't think it's unreasonable to have a time-out in terms of immigration from these particular countries, he's alluding to the seven countries in the executive order, based on the threats that we face. not the religious makeup. if it turns in to anything other than that, then executive order will run afoul of the law. but i think most americans support a time-out. but a complete ban forever is not in our national security interests. is it in -- is it consistent here steve of our national security interests? >> no, it's not. i have great respect for senator graham. i think that what he just laid out in terms of saying the american public can take a time-out from this, you know that can make a lot of sense. but and hes with spoke about, this was imposed on ours. this timing. and it's largely explode the without guide answer to the key agencies

. >> kasie hunt is on capitol hill. the skepticism that donald trump has aired on this, you have heard him invoke the example of the iraq war. the runup to the iraq war. a pretty considerable intelligence failure there. paul ryan today expressing his broad confidence in the intelligence community but also saying, yes, they are not always right. how much wiggle room -- did any wiggle room, i should say, emerge from the hearing today? >> steve, i think this is really the difference between some republicans here on capitol hill and where donald trump has come down. i think that that is, quite frankly, the territory that is the most dangerous for president-elect trump in its potentl to open a rift within his own party. senators like john mccain, lindsey graham. but going beyond that, marco rubio. there is a long list of other people who don't want to see trump disparage the intelligence community. they view people who serve the intelligence community in a similar way that they view people who serve in the armed forces. sena

kasie hunt, nbc news, washington. >> chuck todd joins us now. see you. >> good morning, sir. >> that was obviously a very busy week we can dig into but start with the most recent news, the immigration executive order from president trump, 120-day suspension of the refugee program, a 90-day suspension of immigration from seven different countries and barring syrian refugees indefinitely. a narrow ruling as kelly o'donnell said from a judge here in brooklyn, a federal judge, on part of it. is there any limit on how far this can go? the white house has said even in the last 24 hours they may broaden it further depending on how things go. >> i think we'll see. i think there's going to be more legal challenges to this order. i think specifically the idea this applies to green cardholders is going to i think come under some debate in the federal courts because when you get a green card in this country you're supposed to have all the same rights as a citizen has essentially except with the ability to vote and serve on juries and even in some places you