Transcripts For KYW Face The Nation 20170305

Leon panetta will also be here. And we will go indepth into a blockbuster New York Times report that the u. S. Has been involvedin cyber warfare against north korean miss still launches that is president and Republican Leaders begin a coordinated push to replace obamacare we will get a Progress Report from Health Human Services head dr. Tom price and have plenty of political analysis. All straight ahead on face the nation. Dickerson good morning and welcome to face the nation, i am john dickerson. The Senate Intelligence committee was already investigating russian efforts to med until the 2016 election but yesterday the president opened a whole new set of questions by accusing his predecessor, president obama of wiretapping Trumps Campaign headquarters and this morning, the president has asked Congressional Committees to investigate. We are going to try to sort through all of this today and we begin with the top democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark warner, senator, lets start with the claims by the president he tweeted that he on saturday that he had just found out obama had quote unquote my wires tapped in trump tower just before the victory, nothing found. He called it mccarthyism. What do you make of this . Well, john, lets step back for a moment and look at what we do know. We know that we have seen an unprecedented attack by a foreign adversary, russia, in terms of meddling in our election. We saw before the election thousand internet trolls trying to use and place classified information, we saw manipulation of certain algorithms so that if you googled certain items you got russian news, rt news, other false news, we saw the selective hacking into dnc and individuals that then tried to leak that information to benefit mr. Trump. We also saw before the election an unusual change in the republican platform in favor of russia. We saw mr. Trump himself encourage the russians to hack into Hillary Clinton and we saw this just unusual affection that the president seems to have, or once seemed to have with Vladimir Putin and since the inaugural, we have seen the resignation of the National Security advisor and recusal of the attorney general because of contacts with russia. Now we have this unsubstantiated claim made by the president which shows in a certain way that the president doesnt understand how you obtain a wiretap. You have to go before a judge and show either probable cause or if it is in terms of foreign intelligence a guy is a court and show that there is evidence of some type of contact with a foreign adversary. So what i find so strange and i thought the president s comments could no longer surprise me, but, boy, this one yesterday surprised me to make that type of claim without any evidence is, i think, very reckless. Dickerson do you think there, is lets stick to the president s claim first and go back to the other list. Do you think there is any fisa court order this morning on meet the press former director of National Intelligence James Clapper said there was no fisa court order. I am not aware of any fisa court order regarding the trump tower. Dickerson and other kinds of court orders. Ongoing investigation it is fbi might be taking, i am not aware, but it doesnt take a Sherlock Holmes to realize what this litany of events and this drip, drip, drip of activities, the investigation, i will have to tell you i have been in public life a long time, there is nothing i have done in any life in public tha that is as important as trying to get this investigation done right and bipartisan and get the facts out to the American People. Dickerson the president s claim, could he just be going off on something on a breitbart report or had access he has access to the best possible intelligence. He has access to the best intelligence. I think time will tell but i am not aware as general clapper has said of any kind of fisa order that was somehow, you know, in effect bugging trump tower, but i feel like this, again, feels like an attempt where the president is trying to distract us by filling out he is distracting with unsubstantiated information, again if the president is correct and he says there is nothing here, then he should welcome this investigation into dickerson have you seen any investigations between the Trump Campaign and russia . We are early into this investigation. We have our staff out looking at information. I will go out this week. We are going to have unprecedented access to all of the intelligence. Dickerson meaning fbi intelligence as well . Because breitbart says the fbi is holding back. All the intelligence that is appropriate we will get to all of that. I know my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will look at this and one of the things that gives me pride this is happening, i have seen colleagues on the committee, republican colleagues like Susan Collins and roy blunt, marco rubio all make public statements saying they are committed to not having this being interfered by politics and us getting to the bottom of it and getting the facts. Dickerson quickly on the fbi, though, house intelligence adam schiff is a says the fbi is holding the significant issues from members of congress smp that true . I believe i have a good working relationship with director comey. You know, we are at the beginnings of this and we will get the information we need to get 0 the bottom of this. Who are you going to call . Is Michael Flynn going to testify . Listen, i think we are looking at when to hold public hearings and also starting to prepare lists of individuals that i think need to come testify. I believe considering general flynns series of contacts and the fact he had to resign, i want to hear from general flynn. Dickerson are you working hand in hand with senator burn, the chairman of the committee. We have the ability to have frank conversations, we had conversations like that. I can tell you as recently as thursday chairman burr and i, and he was very strong with the Intel Community we need to get all of the facts and get access, unprecedented access and we got that access. Dickerson you say you have frank conversations. Senator burr was one the white house called an asset, to act as a character witness against these reports there was contact between trump and the russia. Do you have confidence i have confidence we are going to get to the bottom of this. He is going to do his job. Chairman burr and i are going to get this done. And if at any point, and i made this very clear from the outset if at any point i feel like we are not getting access to all of the information or if there are barriers to getting this done, then i will say so, and look for a different venue, but what gives me faith is that this is a committee, the Intelligence Committee for a lot of reasons works in a more bipartisan way than virtually any committee and the fact we have so Many Republican members on the committee that are equal he committed to getting to the bottom of this. This is as serious as anything i have ever been involved in. Dickerson final question theres it is serious and there is an attempt by some people in the bureaucracy to put forward leaks that hurt the real estate. Do those leaks, which some, would, which some in your party cheer like crazy undermine what you are doing and betting to the bottom . Look any leaks of intelligence is serious and needs to be investigated. Because, you know, put peoples fliefs jeopardy potentially. I have great trust and respect for the Intelligence Community. I wish the president would show that same level of trust and respect for the scrns committee, because they do a good job for us, and they need to have we need to have their back. Dickerson all right, senator warner thanks so much for being with us and we now turn to a republican colleague of senator warners on the Intelligence Committee, senator Susan Collins. Senator, what do you make of what President Trump has said about these wiretaps. Shouldnt we talking about, should he be talking about this on twitter . Is this helpful . It would be more helpful if he turned it over to the Intelligence Committee any evidence that he has, what we need to deal with is evidence, not just statements. At this point, i would say no, i see no evidence of what he has alleged, but i also have not seen collaboration as director clapper also said today that he had not seen evidence of collaboration. We are at the very early stages of our investigation, and this is why it is so important that we do an indepth, exhaustive bipartisan, independent investigation, because the American People deserves answers to all of these allegations and counter allegations, so that we can get on with the business of this country. Dickerson the president has said and the white house has said they are not going to talk anymore about his accusations over the weekend, but now that he has put that out there, he is the president of the yiewrks he had access to this information even if he may have been going off a news report, he has access to all of this information. Do you think it is important for him now to put forward this evidence in some form to back up his claims because it is now out there and people might think because he is the president he has some special understanding . In other words, not wait until the committee is done with its work but does he have an obligation to present some kind of evidence now that he has put this charge out there about president obama . The president has called for congressionallations into the allegations that he made starting yesterday morning, so i would expect that he is going to want to provide our committee with any evidence that he has. My own theory is that the russians are determined to sew the seeds of discontent and doubt about the legitimacy of our democracy and other we were democracies, and that they were going to do that regardless of who was elected president. So it is really important that we know what happened, what the facts are, that we bet to the bottom of this. Dickerson when you say he will provide the committee with information, but do you think he owes something to the public now that he has kind of thrown this out there and now superintendent going to say anything more about it but it is out there and live does he owe the public more than what he owes the committee, just as a matter of public trust . Do you agree with that . It would probably be helpful if he gave more information, but it also might be helpful if he Just Department comment further and allowed us to do our work. The committees work is underway. I am convinced we are going to do the kind of exhaustive, indepth and prompt investigation that will help put these allegations to rest. One way or the other. Dickerson you mentioned going through everything, and i am going to ask you about President Trumps tax returns, because some people believe and we are going to need to figure out whether there was any influence on the president you have to know whether there were any ties to russia. You said that the committee will perhaps subpoena the tax returns if necessary. Do you think a Committee Investigation that ends without looking at the tabs returns has fulfilled its duty that the committee fulfilled its duty . It is premature for me to reach that conclusion right now. What i am convinced of, because i know this committee well and i know how seriously we take this charge is that we will go wherever the evidence leads us and that we will get all of the information that we need. If that includes President Trumps tax returns, then i have confidence that we will ask for them. If we dont need them in order to reach our conclusions, then we wont. But it is too soon to tell. Dickerson but will you come up with sort of a hunting list in terms of all the places cow would want inquiry and wouldnt the tax returns be a pretty high up on the list on that . Lets see where the evidence leads us. We are just now beginning to have facts as senator warner mentioned to the information that the Intelligence Community has, like senator warner, i will be going over to review that information. It is many binders thick, so lets see where the evidence leads us. Dickerson let me ask you a question quickly on the Affordable Care act. You put forward an alternative or a bill. Where do things stand in the republican ranks in terms of a replacement for the Affordable Care act . There is not a consensus. This is very difficult to achieve the president s goals and the goals that many of us have of wanting to expand access to coverage and have a damper on the prices we have seen a lot of problems with the individual markets, in a death spiral in many states under the acat so the irony here is regardless of who is elected president , we were going to have to do Major Repairs on the aca. I put forth a plan with senator cassidy, who is a physician, that is a comprehensive plan that gives states the options of doing what is best for their citizens, and we believe would actually expand the access to health insurance. That is our goal. But there is not a consensus at this point. Dickerson very quickly, how long do you think it will take to get to consensus . There are a few minor details or still talking about the big complicate business of something that takes a, up 15 percent of the economy . It is very complicated and we shouldnt rush it. We need to get this right. Dickerson all right, senator collins, thanks so much for being with us and we will be back in one minute to talk to the form never head o of the ci, former secretary of defense and former chief of staff, it is all one person, that is leon panetta comincoming up when we come bacn one minute. And contains the best oral decongestant. Live claritin clear, with claritind. Sfx engine revving silence joining us now is former secretary of defense and cia director leon panetta. Both secretary, panetta lets start with the new revelation Organization Claims by the president. Who do americans look to be the adult 0 to say who is, this is what is happening . Well, you know, what i see here is this president is making the same mistake past president s made when they faced scammeds that he is trying to divert attention. They are trying to obfuscate and trying to cover up. They are trying to somehow raise other issues and in the end, it is going to be the truth that will determine what is involved here, and not tweets but the truth. Dickerson we had an instance where this week the attorney general had to recuse himself from investigation into campaign events. We have got, now you have got investigative intelligence commit examine tease investigating. I mean, do you think people just need to wait for the Intelligence Committees in the house and senate to do their work or is there some better way you think to get at what are now several sets of issues. There is the russian melding and now the claims the president made, quite extraordinary claims, a, and maybe, and maybe you can given your experience to give some context to claim that his predecessor was wiretapping and comparing him to nixon and mccarthy. The best advice i can give the president and this administration is to get ahead of this, dont get behind it. Get ahead of it. Present the facts as they know it and commit themselves to cooperating with the investigations that are going on. This issue is not going away. It is not going away. There is too much here. We found the russians to have tried to interfere in our election process. We have a situation now where the administration has denied contacts with the russians and we are finding out that that is not true, that there have been contacts with the russians. And lastly, the president himself has raised this issue this whole National Security team has condemned the russians and putin and he still winds up defending putin. So you put all of that together, it may not lead you to some kind of collaboration or collusion, but it raises issues that have to be investigated. That is why you need a bipartisan and i want, a thorough and a credible investigation. Dickerson when you say i want, but that can still be within the congress . Yes. No. I think as you have seen, these are responsible members of congress who want to look into this issue, i think they deserve the opportunity to do that. I would hope they dont run into robs, because if they do run into political problems in the course of this investigation them we may very well have to turn to a special prosecutor. Dickerson what do you think foreign, other countries think about when they look at this . Does this have, we have got the president accusing his predecessor and accuses against the president , how does this affect our standing as other countries look to america. It is sending a terrible message out there. I can tell you based on my own conversations with people abroad that they are very concerned about the administration, about the president , they are concerned about whether he truly is going to be committed to the kind of world leadership that we have seen the United States provide, but wherever time these things happen, every time he tweets, every time these issues come up that indicate that, you know, there is obviously something to this russian issue and the administration is not cooperating, when that happens, when you, he accuse as past president of wiretapping without any evidence of that being the case, it makes us vulnerable. It weakens the United States and it makes us vulnerable to our enemies. That is the danger. Dickerson speaking of enemies of the United States, north korea and the New York Times has a piece today about u. S. Efforts using cyber warfare to basically hurt the north Korean Missile system. Should americans be in fear of the Cyber Retaliation by the north koreaians . I have always felt that cyber is. Here to stay. It is one of the weapons that we have to deal with and we have to be smart enough to use it not only defensively but offensively as well. And i think, you know, the stories you are seeing indicate that the United States is on the cutting edge of that kind of technology. President trump is most concerned about north korea. Does he have it right in terms of all of the Global Threats he seems to be most concerned about north korea. Do you share that concern . Well, there are a number of threats that are out there that we are dealing with a very dangerous world. I think the pentagon feels that russia is at the top of the list because of the nuclear threat, and i understand that. But we also have to worry about north korea and the unpredictability of that leader. We have to worry about the middle east and the chaos there. There are a number of crisis points that the United States has to consider and the problem is, when we are diverted, when the president is diverted from paying attention to those crises, we pay a price. Dickerson all right. Stay right there, secretary, we will be right back, we are going to take a short break, but we will be back in a moment. Consider an aarp Medicare Supplement Insurance Plan insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. Like any of these types of plans, it could help you with outofpocket medical costs. Call now and request your free decision guide and explore the range of aarp Medicare Supplement plans. Start gathering the information you need. To roll into sixtyfive with confidence. Dickerson and we are back with leon panetta. President trump has suggested that he wants 54 billion in defense spending next year. What does the Defense Department need . Is that a good idea and what would they spend it on . You know, the worst thing they could do is to go through a roller coaster ride on defense spending where we are down, increase it dramatically, the next year take it back down. We have gone through the sequester process which is literally impacted on our readiness. So, yes, we need an increase to try to deal with the readiness issue, but what we really need is a gradual increase and certainty in the budget and if you are not providing certainty as to where the Defense Budget is going, you can talk about increasing it all you want, you are going to create chaos in terms of the Defense Department. Dickerson and how do you get, you mentioned the sequester, that was a draconian budget cuts as a result of not reaching budget agreements how do you get that certainty in budgeting for Defense Department or anywhere else, for that matter . Well, john, what has to happen in this town and it hasnt happened for a long time, is that the president and the congress have to come to a budget agreement that really deals with this 20 trillion debt that we face. And the problem now is that they are all trying to do this by going after Discretionary Spending which only constitutes a small part of the overall budget, what you have to do is put everything on the table. You have to put entitlements, you have to put taxes and discretionary. Thats what we did in the past. Thats how we got a balanced budget. We are not going to be able to deal with the budget unless there is that kind of agreement and that is essential, not only for purposes of the budget but for the American People to understand what our priorities are for the future. Dickerson the president said he wont touch medicare. Well, i think it is dangerous. Any time you put something off, you know, off the table, you are just asking for trouble, entitlements make twothirds of the federal budget for goodness sakes. You are not going to look at how you can develop cost controls on those programs . You will never be able to deal with a budget crisis if you just eliminate that whole area. Dickerson you were brought into the white house as chief of staff during a rocky period in the clinton years. What do you make of the Current White House operation as you viewed it . Well, i worry about it, because when the president goes off and does what he did within the last few days of just going ahead and tweeting without checking on things, there is something wrong. There is something wrong in terms of the discipline, within the white house and how you operate. You cannot have this kind of situation where the president is not properly briefed, that you think out what the president is going to say, and that you have somebody in charge of the white house staff that i think still hasnt taken place and i think the white house is paying a price for that failure. Dickerson all right, secretary panetta, thanks so much and we will be right back. Stay with us. This portion of face the nation is sponsored by charles schwab, own your tomorrow. Oh no. Schwab, again . Index investing for that low . Thats three times less than fidelity. And four times less than vanguard. Whats next, no minimums . No minimums. Schwab has lowered the cost of investing again. Introducing the lowest cost index funds in the industry with no minimums. I bet theyre calling about the schwab news. Schwab. A modern approach to wealth management. A heart attack doesnt or how healthy you look. No matter who you are, a heart attack can happen without warning. 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Before we get to your specific report, reporting, President Trump is very focused on north korea. Give us a sense of why you think he should be. Well, when president obama leftovers he made it pretty clear as President Trump said there is one big military problem out there. President trump has never quite said what that is, but clearly it is north korea, and it is north korea because in the last year and a half of the obama era, the North Koreans made huge progress in both Nuclear Tests and in bringing in a new generation of missile technology. Eventually, that eventually, maybe two years from now, maybe three, maybe four, but not that long, is going to be able to reach at least the west coast of the United States. So that time frame for dealing with this problem which has been kicked down the road by president after president after president is really now. Dickerson and you detailed the Cyber Attacks used to try and keep that time frame really long . Thats right. So the key to this right now is keeping the North Koreans from learning how to get that icbm across the pacific, and the meant gone with the help from the intelligence agencies work for many years to come up with ways to do this using cyber technology, to actually interfere with the way that the North Koreans could send their launches, in fact the origin of the story is that colleague and i who worked on Nuclear Issues for a long time were sitting around one day last spring thinking, do you think, just falling into the, they are falling into the ocean too fast and he went back and discovered the design of this miss still is based and i an old russian design had a failure rate of about 13 percent when the russians were doing them, and that the north korea krans were running a failure rate of 88 percent. Now a lot of things could explain that, the North Koreans are not the best manufacture in other words the world, you know, they are not the best weld in other words the world, but clearly Something Else was making this worse, and that was it. And then there is president obama who looked across the spectrum of our defenses and said this Missile Defense we spent 300 billion building since the eisenhower era, the stuff that is up in alaska and california. Dickerson that shoots it out of the air. That shoots it out of the air has a failure rate of about 56 percent under ideal conditions. So he said, this is not going to defend us against the problem. Dickerson so have the north korea North Koreans figured this out . One of the reasons we have are pretty clear they have an Investigation Underway and figured out somebody was messing in their system so we wrote ahead and wrote a story carefully in a way we thought would not provide the Technical Details that would allow the North Koreans to defeat what the United States is doing, but it is clear we have a big issue, several big issues here. One is, is this enough . And thats a big issue that mr. Trump is going to have to go deal with. Second big issue is, are there other alternatives . Do you negotiate with the North Koreans . Which a lot of people say we should. President obama decided not to. Do you take more Decisive Action . Do you try to attack these launch sites can i netcally . Dickerson you mean militarily . Militarily, right, you blow them up. If you do that, and you miss some, you run the risk of starting off another war in the Korean Peninsula and no one wants to go do that. So the russia story is a fascinating one. The tweets are as neigh diversion, but in the end, at some point President Trump is going to have to sit down and actually focus on a few threats like this one. Dickerson all right, david sanger thank you so much, a fascinating piece. And we will be right back with our panel. Dickerson one of the top items on the president s legislative agenda is the repeal and replacement of obamacare, Health Human Services secretary dr. Tom price joins us from atlanta to give us an update. Secretary price, the president said that he would have a replacement for Affordable Care act on day one and then more recently he said it was more complicated an issue, healthcare that anyone would have guessed. Where is. Does the president s plan stand at this point. John, thank you so much, so good to be with you today. Before i answer that let me just say it is an incredible privilege for me to serve it is a Health Human Services secretary. The mission of hhs is to improve the health and safety and wellbeing of the American People, and right now, across the country, there are many individuals who have a challenge from Healthcare Access and cost of insurance in the individual and Small Group Market and thats what we want to focus on, and there are literally millions of folks who have either, unable to afford their insurance or pay a premiums, premiums are up 25 percent over the last year, almost 100 percent over the last three to four years, so what we want to make certain is that we are being true to the principles of healthcare which is a system that is accessible for everybody and affordable for everybody and of the highest innovation and very soon. Dickerson theffde being care for more people. At lesser cost. He said people will have access to the doctor that they want and the plan that they want and it will be paid for without touching medicare. Is all of that still true . Absolutely, and i think it is important for the American People to appreciate. And the speech that the president gave this past tuesday nights, what he did is outline the priorities for the American People. They want a system where the states have the flexibility and authority, authority is returned to the state for the regulation of Health Coverage. They want to make certain they can buy across state lines. They want to make certain that preexisting illness and injury is not makes certain it is covered from an insurance standpoint. They want drug prices to come down. He said something also very important about Lawsuit Abuse. He said we ought to address the issue of Lawsuit Abuse and the practice of defensive medicine where we are wasting hundreds of billions of dollars every single year so these are the priorities the president has outlined and they are consistent with the priorities that we are moving forward with that Health Human Services and we are very, very excited about the opportunity. But once again, respond to the needs and the concerns and the fears, frankly of the American People about the Healthcare System that they currently find themselves in. Dickerson one of the fears people currently on the Affordable Care act have is they will not have it after these reforms are put in place and there seeps to have been kind of different claims about whether the 20 million or so who are on it will be able to continue their coverage. People in the administration have said absolutely yes, they will be covered. Others have said that is a goal. Those are two different things. Which is it . Well, i think our goal is to make certain that every single american has access to affordable coverage that is of the highest quality. , you know, it is often, what is often times missed, john, there are 20 million americans across this land who are exposed to the penalty of either chosen to take the penalty, not purchasing insurance or taken a wave and the reason is, waiver, because the federal government dictated to individuals what they must buy, what kind of Health Coverage they must purchase. So what our goal is, what the president s goal is, is to give people choices, to let them purchase the kind of insurance that they want for themselves and for their family, not what washington forces them to buy. This is a real important dipping shun between where we are right now in that individual and Small Group Market and where we want to go. Dickerson so under the Affordable Care act now i dont have to worry about losing coverage, i wont be so expensive i wont be able to afford it . Well, it is becoming expensive right now, as i mentioned the premiums are going up the deductibles if you are a guy or gal out there making 50, 60,000 and you have a couple of kids your premium by and large is somewhere between eight and 12,000 a year. You dont have that kind of money, so you may have a card, you may is have an insurance card but you dont have care because you cant afford the deductible in order to get the kind of care that you need. So our goal is to bring those costs down and the way you do that, again, is through flexibility and allowing states to have the 36ability to care for their vulnerable populations thats see fit, choices for patients all across this land, making certain that they can purchase what they want and not what washington says they must buy. Making certain that the doctors are able to provide the kind of care that they believe is most important, not, again, responding to what washington tells them they must do. So we have a lot of wonderful opportunities to make certain, again, that the American People are able to afford the kind of care that they want. Dickerson final quick question on medicare, mr. Secretary, Speaker Paul Ryan said it may still be an open question about whether President Trump really doesnt want to touch medicare. Is it an open question . Might there be a back door way that the president will go back on his Campaign Promise not to touch it either for current retirees or anybody in the future . What is the final bottom line here . I will tell you what is not out of question is we believe in the guarantee of medicare for our seniors. The challenge that we have as crowell know and your viewers know, is that medicare is, some folks have said going insolvent or broke, within a ten year period of time we wont have the money in the Medicare Program to be able to pay the benefits to seniors in this country that has been promised to them. We dont think that is appropriate. So we believ we believe strongle guarantee of medicare and make certain it is a viable financially secure Program Going forward. So that seniors now and in the future know that it will be there for them. Dickerson all right, mr. Secretary, sounds like a guarantee with perhaps some changes issues maybe not, but we are out of time. The i reappreciate you being with us and i appreciate your time. Thanks, john. It is good to be with you. Dickerson and we are back with our political panel. Julie pace is the White House Correspondent for the associated press. Ed okeefe covers politics for the washington post, we are also joined by cbs news political analyst slates Jamelle Bouie and ramesh ponnuru, sr. Editor of the national review. Donald trump gave his most sustained Public Comments that were restrained, the word president ial is used a lot, then saturday, a series of tweets that seemed the opposite of that. Where are we now going into monday with the Trump Presidency . It was incredible whiplash this week. I think we have to give the president credit for the speech he gave on tuesday night. It was a side of him we dont often see, it was restrained, it was traditional, he got into some of the agenda that he wants to see going forward, but it just quickly gets over taken in some cases because of actions by people with jeff session Whose Department totally be up front with the Congressional Committee when he was doing his confirmation hearing but then it is president himself who goes out on saturday and distracts with these series of tweets. And the overarching problem for him is he is going into a week that is going to be policy heavy. A new rollout of the vettings eo and then a rollout of healthcare, and the success or failure of healthcare is going to be one of the measures by which his swear presidency is judged on, and to distract from that, to not go into this week with a sense of focus i think really hampers his administration. Dickerson 0, ramesh on that. 1 of the things that made republicans happy about this speech is it was focused. The president hits the mark of a speech like that, and it is important when you have a big piece of legislation, and now the worry is back to distraction. I think there was a very short sigh of relief that came from capitol hill republicans, but i think there is a connection between what we saw on tuesday night with the president s speech and what we saw on saturday morning with the tweets, which was the president thought he hit a home run with the speech. He was getting great positive reviews, and purportedly he was furious that story moved on to attorney general sessions misleading testimony in congress, and that is what apparently set him in this mood where he sends these tweets. One other thing about these tweets i think really is remarkable, he is alleging explicitly a nixon watergate level conspiracy on the part of the Previous Administration against his own presidency, and then he starts commenting about the apprentice within an hour. I mean, this is just a remarkable set of things, and it makes cow wonder how certainly you can take the things he is saying. Dickerson and also after a speech which on tuesday night he says there said there is no more time for trivial fights and the apprentice would probably be in the trivial category. Ja legal the question for you is, when the president takes to twitter it is often as a strategic move to distract from one thing the and move to another. Do you see strategy in what was happening yesterday . I see some strategy in he wants to regain the attention of the media, the attention of everyone from these sessions controversy, i think we should not overstate the degree of strategy here. We have seen over the years, over the last 24 months that trump is impulsive, that trump is very self involved, you might say, and so this can also just well be trump lashing out as trump does. I will say one quick thing about last tuesdays speech. What was relatively more calm and serious, than most of trumps addresses to the public, it should be said that some of the policy contempt there is just, was just as extreme and just as aggressive as we have seen in his less stable moments, you can pick your own word, in those moments. So for example in the speech he announced the creation of an office that, dedicated to publicizing crimes made by undocumented i immigrants which has two problems, the first is that it prunes undocumented are responsible for more crimes and the second is that it is a stigmatizing and creates an atmosphere that people are creating harm to immigrants, and trumps tone shouldnt distract from that. Dickerson and speaking of which you talked about unity, unifying with democrats and yet doing things that va mel just described, they are not going to be in the mood to unify. Not at all and they werent i mean, they fled the chamber as fast as they could because, having essentially held their nose throughout the whole thing and they even said, look, we see no reason to work with him. He has made no real attempt to make any, you know, overtures to us, why should we bother . And i think the fact now even today, we are seeing the sentiment on other programs raised down about the leader of the Intelligence Committee shows you to what extent this really spreads. It spreads all the way even into the investigation, into russia, there is no appetite up there among democrats to cooperate with this president , because they are convinced that he is just so tarnished and they see no political benefit. Whether that works for them ultimately remains to be seen, but i think it is a real testament to the poisonous nature and the fact he has done nothing so far, at least in their view to fix things. Dickerson mark warner working very hard to right. To keep the support there for his chairman richard burr, and in his comments, jewel, i cant i want to ask you about the substance of President Trumps russia policy because there is a lot of talk about russia and the connection and all of that but what is happening with respect to actual position on russia. This is an interesting conversation that is happening in the white house against the backdrop of all of these revelations about people meeting with the russian am bags for. The president came into office talking about striking a deal with russia and it hasnt quite been defined but the broad buckets include cooperation on the islamic state, ukraine, some kind of negotiations over arms control and i am told he has been sending signals both to his advisors and to allies that this may not be the right moment for that kind of deal. A couple of reasons why. One is that the white house is very concerned legitimately about some treaty violations that russia has had involving a Missile Launch a few weeks ago but there are other factors. You have some new voices in the room with the president who are tougher on russia than he has been in some of his previous advisors have been. His european allies that are learning to speak the language of trump, talking to him about a deal, you dont want to make a bad deal with russia. You dont want to make a weak deal with russia, it is interesting they are picking up on the cues and frankly it underscores the Political Climate right now for him to have a president the moving forward on a robust deal with russia against all of these questions about his relationship i think even he, and his advisors are realizing that would be pretty difficult to strike that kind of deal in this climate. Dickerson ramesh, let me switch to obamacare here from russia. And ask, where do you think things are as the house leaders begin their process and as the white house sort of cops along with them, what is the state of play with respect to replacing obamacare in congress and the white house . I think there is considerable confusion and disagreement still among republicans. I think that the congressional Republican Leadership has its own basic sense of where it wants to go. It wants to have a tax credit driven strategy that provides coverage to a lot of people, even in a post obamacare world, but there is a significant number of conservatives in congress who dont want any part of that, and if the administration is not being entirely clear about where it stands on this basic divide among republicans. Normally, Congressional Republicans in charge of congress, with the republican president would be looking to the administration to set their direction on this kind of issue. This time, they are not, or at least that direction is not being provided. It is fascinating in the context of our friend paul kaine in the post, he said more than 160 House Republicans have never worked before with a republican president. They are used to blocking, attacking, they are not used to running with the ball and we are seeing this every day up there, i mean, all of the other noise about russia and whatever the president is tweeting about or saying or doing they dont know how to deal with this issue and they are going to have real trouble. To hear the secretary here now donning your questions about the specifics of what this outline will look like, they are allegedly working off his blueprint he wrote as a congressman and even that isnt able to generate enough agreement. If you have as many as 40 House Republicans that are concerned out there wanting to stand in the way because they dont think it is conservative enough or costs too much money thats tend of the game there wont be healthcare reform if they cant get it out of the house and if they cant find democrats to work with them and they dont want to. Dickerson well the democrats definitely dont want to work with them. It is almost a perfect storm of dysfunction for the effort to get, to repeal the Affordable Care act because you have Congress People who have not worked with a republican president and have very little experience with this legislation, you a white house that is arguably in in disarray or at least is not does not have the kind of experience that you need to sheppard major pieces of legislation through congress. You have a president whose stated goals for reform are count one, run kind of counter to what Congressional Republicans say they want. And the of course you have democrats who have just decided largely to say, hey, we will let you take care of this and we wont really help out. There is a time here too that as time goes on this becomes more and more difficult, and so an. Dickerson it is a political matter. It is a political matter, we may already be approaching the point politically where there isnt that much to do, because it is just opposition is building, voters are speaking out, in the opposition and democrats are really rallying their side against it. Dickerson july i cant, one thing i heard from price, he said the promise of medicare will be there. When donald trump was a candidate he, no tinkering, no how. Absolutely, promises are different, promises is a whole different thing, the promise is there but the form of sit different. And the president in the Campaign Said that over and over and over again that will come back to haunt him if an eventual package does make changes. One thing that is interesting about this moment that we are entering is, trump is now going to have to really be a president who bets involved in legislation if he wants to get this through. You people, lawmakers on the hill who want to hear from him. They want to pick up the phone and give him a call. We dont know if he is capable of doing that. This is going to be a big test for him as a president. Dickerson ramesh, the president , the reason paul ryan wants flexibility on med compare is to find money for all of the other things President Trump wants to do. The point julie made about the it is an important one. Because there are over 40 conservative republicans are holdouts and cant pass anything, but are they holdouts if at some point President Trump is saying i need you to replace obamacare, i understand you have got some problem you have with this legislation but it is decision time are you going to be responsible for defying me, hurting my presidency and keeping obamacare on the books . I dont think those 40 will stay 40. Dickerson he still has political power. I will ask you about the immigration reform. The day of the speech, there is is a little notion that president might support permanent legal status, have a job, pay your taxings you wont have to worry about getting deported. What did you make of that. Twice in february he had private lunches with people where he raised this issue. Repeatedly in public he hasnt brought it up. So one wonders what is his stated goal here . You know, all he really talked about was that immigration victims Crime Victims Office which is not going to be a very busy office, frankly, because there are, they are isolated and very high profile examples of this but it is not widespread. What is widespread and what is causing a lot of trouble and concern for people right now is the really uneven enforcement of immigration law, the hispanic congressional caucus to their credit has done a good job of tracking this and the examples of, you know, 22yearold arrested after speaking out in a press conference about them is being sent back to mexico. A mother who was checking in with ice for years being sent back to mexico. Dickerson in other words, it is not just all over the country, it is not the these are good people, no criminal record at all and the confusion this is causing with very little congressional oversight where the president is talking about doing it and waiting for him to say what he is going to do is just incredible and causing great confusion. Dickerson all right. We are going to have to leave it there. Thanks to all of you and we will be back in a moment. I ordered the soup. Of course, maam. My apologies. Excuse me, pardon me. Whats not surprising . How much money matt saved by switching to geico. Could i get my parking validated . Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. We buy any car dot com we buy any car dot com any any any any did you know trading in your car at a dealer could cost you money . A recent study found consumers who trade in their car pay an average of 990 dollars more. 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