Why today . Is it because the media with a laser focus on health care and the russia investigation has to cover it . One could be for given for wondering if this is more about changing the narrative for an administration thats having a tough week. The president is missing no chance to hairs and publicly belittle his own attorney general. Jared kushner has been speaking to lawmakers about a meeting he had with a russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign. There have been staff shake ups and mixed maenlz from the new White House Communications team. And now within the past 24 hours theres been a major defeat on a widely unpopular healthcare bill that could have caused millions nor mernls to become uninsured. And were expecting another defeat in just a moment. Lets go to garrett headache. Garrett, are this next vote is scheduled for some time in the next half an hour. This is also a vote a bill that is not expected to pass. Tell us about it rrlt thats right. So in the next half hour we should see republicans vote on this clean repeal or repeal and delay. This is the same vote they took in 2015 when they knew president obama would veto it. Now its expected to fail but probably by a narrow margin. Weve heard three no votes back when this was discussed as plan a. A week or so ago. I would doubt that many more republicans than that would vote against it just so theyre not accused of voting for something when they knew it would be vetoed and against it later. After that were going to start the process of moving towards what republicans are seeing as sort of the end game here, which is what weve been calling this skinny repeal. The idea on that the way you can think about it is to take the clean repeal or even the bcra and just keep stripping away the elements out of it that republicans dont like until they get to something that 50 of them can agree on. So if theres concerns about roll back the medicaid expansion, hok, thats out. If there are concerns about maybe repealing some of the taxes, okay, those are out too. And youll eventually be left with just a bear minimum repeal, maybe just the individual employer mandate and one of the tax coming out. But the idea being you can just kick that over to a Conference Committee and sort it out with the house there. Already democrats are calling that a troe january horse saying theyre just going to get something to pass and were going to be right back where we were a week ago a few weeks down the line. For a lot of technical reasons that you and i cant get into now you cant just pass anything and hope it matches up with the house bill. Lets talk about this transgender military ban that was announced this morning. A lot of people are saying did this come out of thin air . Is this just distraction . There is actually something about it thats relevant. There was some discussion about this last week that the president may have been reacting to. Reporter thats right. So on the house side theyre dealing with a spending bill right now that has an amendment in it from a conservative lawmaker that some people saw as a poison pill. This one lawmaker had inserted an amendment that would remove funding for transgender people in the military who needed medical treatment in their gender reassign wants and things like that. All democrats were opposed to that amendment. A lot of moderates were on poegsd to that amend am. And we had some reporting that the house leadership had reached out to the white house and said, guys, anything you can do to help us with this . And what so what we saw from the president here this morning, might, we cant directly connect the dots here be a hand fisted way to deal with that problem. Here on the senate side, the Senate Armed Services committee were caught unaware of this. But it does seem like there was some conversation between House Republicans and the white house on this issue in the days leading up to this. So the idea is that if the president handled this, it wouldnt have to go into this bill and the president was interested in that bill passing because its got funding for the mexico border wall. So he gets to get a win on that bill. Reporter exactly right. So the lawmaker who had proposed this amendment says oh, i guess it doesnt matter any more. If were not going to have transgender people in the military,ic withdraw my amendment. And this spending bill which does indeed include some funding for the border wall along with a number of other priorities for the administration republicans would be able to move forward. Thanks very much. Lets go to Kristen Welker who is in the White House Briefing room for us. Kristen, as much as one might think that the transgender ban was an effort to distract from the other matters at hand, and there are certainly were a lot of questions in the White House Press briefing it, there were certainly a lot of questions about Jeff Sessions and the president s tweeting about that and about health care. So the focus for journalists remains on these big issues. Reporter thats right. First to Jeff Sessions. Sarah Huckabee Sanders sort of reiterated what we heard from President Trump yesterday, which is that hes disappointed in Jeff Sessions, but that there has been no decision to remove him. And she didnt really move the ball forward on that point. I thought, though, the fact that she got so many questions about the transgender ban was significant, the way in which she answered them significant, ali. A lot of takeaways. One, she couldnt spell out what this policy will mean to those who are transgender who are currently serving our country. She was pressed over and over again on whether or not this policy was rolled out without a whole lot of thought, without really consulting with enough people within the department of defense, whether it was done half hazardel. She pushld back on those times of characterization. But bottom line, ali, she couldnt say whether people who are currently serving would be able to keep their job. And then secondly, she over and over again said, look, the bottom line about this, its about military readiness. It has nothing to do with other issues, those on capitol hill, for example. She tried to make it all about that, and she said that this came after a robust review by the president and by his military advisers. And then finally, she got a lot of questions, ali, about some of the president s own statements in the past as it relates to the lgbtq community, including one tweet back in july in which he vowed to fight for the community. She was pressed on that over and over again, including by our own peter alexander, effectively saying doesnt this suggest that hes not fighting for the lgbtq community. Sarah Huckabee Sanders pushld back against that as well. Not surprisingly. At one point she became so frustrated she said im going to basically call it a day if all of your questions relate to this issue. Of course, we have many more questions. She ended the briefing because the president is about to give remarks on jobs. And were going to be livg to those remarks. Kristen, thanks very much. Kristen welker at the white house. Thank you. Garrett headache at the capitol. All right. The Health Care Battle playing out on capitol hill this afternoon, we should note congressman carter voted for the house version rf repeal and replace obamacare back in may. I guess i dont have to add that qualification. Most of your colleagues, all of them voted for it. Not all of them. Not all of them. Youre right. An overwhelming majority of them voted. Well probably have to make the stipulation if you didnt volt for it. That would have to be what i would call out. Nar. Lets talk about the one that is before the senate now, the repeal and maybe replace later. Do you think thats a good idea, the two years to get the repeal instituted while a new bill is designed . Well, theres no question about it. We said all along that we were going to have a transition period. We never claimed that we were going to just turn the lights out and go home. We always said there would be a stable transition period, a guide path if you will, a time during which people could get adjusted. And weve made that clear from the very beginning. What do you think, though, given the reality i guess in 2015 january it was easier to do because the idea was putting a bill up that you knew that president obama would never sienl. Now this is a bill thats about to be law and it seems thaw on the republican side have different views, understandably, about what repealing obamacare should look like, everything from a clean repeal with no replace to a repeal of the mostly medicaid type parts of obamacare. Its seeming hard to come to an agreement on what a bill looks like. Well accident obviously there are indications of that over approximate in the senate. Im baffled by the fact that someone who voted for a repeal a year ago doesnt vote for it now. I dont know what has changed. The only thing thats changed is weve got a president who will actually shine that law now, unlike the previous president who did not sign the law. So it bafls me to think that someone is not in favor of it. Look, this is a failed experiment. Obamacare, all were doing right now is throwing good money after bd a. We are just and we are continuing to stabilize it. Ive heard the critics say youre just letting it fail. No, were not. When tom price became secretary of health and Human Services the first thing he did was to shore it up to make sure that it was going to continue on for at least two years while we had a transition period. If you look, the administration for the month of july just paid the health care zblooish theres some uncertainty about that, right. Thats what the issue is. The insurers are saying that the president has not made an absolute commitment for has tom price to continuing the insurance subsidies that the Insurance Companies get to subsidy low income participants in obamacare. So thats the kiemd of thing that leads to uncertainty. He just made the july payments. Your contract is up, were not really sure were going to renew it at some point ill just start looking for an alternative. No. I would. If my boss sends me that message, im going to look for another job. The Insurance Companies are looking for another alternative and that alternative involves raising premiums. Well a at in point youre right. We are having raising premiums but its because of the failure of obamacare. We havent even had our plan to take effect yet, so how you can blame it on our plan, im not understanding that. Lets say the senate gets some plan passed. None of the plans are as satisfactory at no time conservative wing of the rpgs in the house of representatives. Do you see a way to reconcile these bills . I do. The most important thing at this point is to keep the process going. Weve got to continue to move the ball down the field. The senate needs to get back to us, whatever theyre going to get back to us. Im not sure that a skinny repeal is the answer. I dont know that we can accept that in the house. But at least get Something Back over to us so that we can get it in the conditioners so that we can continue to work on this. The worst thing we could do right now is to punt. We dont need to do that. What do you think about the president going after Lisa Murkowski for her no vote yesterday on the motion to proceed . I think its perfectly fair. Let me tell you, somebody needs to go over into that senate and snatch a knot in their ass. Im telling you, it has gotten to the point where how can you say i voted for this last year but im not going to vote for it this year . This is extremely frustrating for those of us who have put so much into this effort. I serve on the health care subcommittee. We met for 27 1 2 hours to come with up with the American Health care act. It is a good bill. It needs to be voted on. It needs to pass. Congressman, i love talking to you and im going to invite you right now to come back, but the president is walking out into the rose garden, so weve got to go to him. Thank you for your time, sir. Thank you. We just met. We took pictures, right . Thats right. Well, thank you very much. Its my great honor to officially welcome boys and girls nation to the white house. Really special place, isnt it, though . Isnt it great . [applause] great. And i want to congratulate you what a job youve all done basically on all youve achieved at a very young age. Its incredible. For decades the American Legion has brought the best and the brightest to the white house. This has taken place for many years. Each of you were chosen out of the many thousands of people that, you know, theyre all calling in, they want to get into the white house. Is anybody upset that youre here . Okay. But youre all really happy that youre here s right . [applause]. But you represent your state, and thats a very, very important element too and a very important factor in getting here. You all share incredible talent and drive. Most importantly, you have each other to really work with and to help. And you help each other, youre teammates. You love our country. Thats something we all have in common, right . We love our country, right . [applause] while you come from all corners of our great landscape, youre all united by your dwoegs, total dwoegs to our Great American flag, our freedom and the principles that bind us together as one people and one nation. For more than a century the American Legion has taught young citizens about the importance of patriotism and loyalty to our country. And through it all there is nothing like what youre doing today and what youve achieved over a very, very short period of time. We want to thank you and we want to thank the National Chapters and everybody else. We have to really give a special thanks to commander charles schmit. Where is charles . Come on up here, charles. What a great jobl. Come on. See, he wants to give you all the credit. Who served in the air force for 28 years and now advances the legions proud legacy. Thank you, charles. [applause] today were joined by president of the American Legion and auxiliary mary davis. Where is mary . Hello, mary. Want to come up here . Come on, mary. An executive director who i know verna jones. Come on up, verna. I want to thank you for your commitment to these incredible students and to our country. Thank you. I alsome want to honor former National Commander bob turner, who everyone knows. Bob, bob, bob, bob, bob, bob. Wow, thats pretty good, bob. Thats as good as ive ever heard. Thats fantastic. Come on over here, bob. Be careful. We dont want to see bob go down. Do you agree with that . Because elnevhe will never forg that. This year bob is celebrating his 35th year helping to lead boys nation all as a volunteer. Thank you very much, bob. [applause] and bob, i know everyone here today agrees when i say thousands of Young Americans are better patriots because of your incredible and stead fast service. Right, fellas . Right . Through this program countless young people like you have been inspired to protect american interests and to promote american values. Right . Many of those who have been in your place have gone on to become governors, members of congress, generals and one even became a president. Do you know who that one was . Bill clinton. Thats true. See. The American Legion has held this meeting for seven decades. Just think of the history that has occurred during that time. When the first group of students met in 1946 thats an important day. You know why . Thats when i was born. I hate to admit it. I hate to admit it. Oh, 1946. Oh, well. I shouldnt have said that, bob. Our nation had just welcomed home our brave heroes whose spirit and courage achieved victory over tyranny in world war ii. Just over 20 years later young men and women like you watched a man land on the moon and dreamed of new fron tears in space. In 1987 americans all across this nation joined their hearts wr president Ronald Reagan in the hope, the prayer and the conviction that the berlin wall would crumble in the face of truth, justice and freedom. You know all about that. In each of these moments and so many others america try umd. We win. We know how to win. And we win because of the spirit of our people. Believe me, thats a big part of it. Just think of the amazing moments in history you will witness during your lifetime. You saw one on november 8th, right . That was a Pretty Amazing that was a Pretty Amazing moment. We have. And were doing a good job. Our country is doing so well now. Were doing a good job. Are you all happy . Yes, sir. Because you have what it takes to be the leaders that will shape this future. Some of you may want to come back to the capitol some day. Youre going to be back, many of you, and help make the laws that will guide this nation and govern our land. Others may choose to answer the call of duty, put on the uniform and risk everything for our nation and for our nations people. Still others may become business leaders, teachers, artists and inven tors. We have them all. We have them all here today. And some of you dont even really know what it might be, but we have people that are going to be so successful, so incredible in their lives. And youre going to be happy. Do what you love. Do what you love. Follow what you love. So i want to just tell as you pour your whole heart into everything you do, really youre doing it for your family, youre doing it for your country, but youre also doing it for yourselves. Because ultimately you have to do it for yourself. Its better for your country, and your country wants you to succeed so much. But theres no country like the United States of america, and theres no country that can give you the kind of opportunity that we give you in the United States. [applause] being successful is about finding your purpose in life and never, ever giving up. Do you ever give up . No. Does anybody here give up . No, sir. What about here . No, sir. Youre right. And i think they mean it. I think they mean it. You were chosen for this program because you believe in americas future and because you have the ambition and the heart to ensure that america will always be victoryous and will always prevail. Through boys and girls nation youre learning the values that are necessary for a nation to endure and for a nation to thrive. Pride in our history, loyalty to our citizens and allegiance to our Great American flag. In the decades to come you will help our nation reach new heights. Well be so proud of you. Discover new fron tears and strengthen the bonds of loyalty between our country and its people. It is my honor to meet with you all today and it was my greater honor to come out here early before the press got here to take all of those pictures that we took. I hope they send you the right pictures. And they will. As i look out at the audience, i see the next generation of american leaders. I see the promise of our future. I see the strength and love of the american spirit. And because of young people like you, i am more confident than ever in the future of the United States. Together we will make america greater than ever before. I mean that. Make america greater than ever before. Were on our way. You see whats going on and were building up military, were getting great job numbers, best in 17 years. Best job numbers in 17 years. The enthusiasm for manufacturers and business is at just about the highest point since they started taking those tests. So i just want to tell you go out there, go get them. I have no doubt youre going to every one of you be successful. Never quit, never give up. Always do what you love. Take great care of your family and your parents, because we love your parents. You probably wouldnt be here without your parents. Right . So thank you again to the American Legion and congratulations to you all. God bless you and god bless america. And thank you for being at the white house. [applause] President Trump an audience of children once again for the president. He spoke to the american boys and girls of the American Legion. Noteworthy that he said that you probably wouldnt be here without your parents. Im just going to let that sink in for a second. Im joined now by amy davidson. Thank you very much. And we want to talk about some other matters, but this was a much less dark speech than the one he gave to the boy scouts. Yeah. Theres a couple points where you could tell he was sort of holding thims back, like when he alluded to bill clinton having been one of the young representatives in their place meaning John F Kennedy and i think he also said make sure they send you the right pictures. A dig at the media. A little dig at the media but also a reminder that clinton had used rt picture of himself at this event in his campaign materials, shaking hands with john f. Kennedy. You wonder if any of these kids do go into politics if that will exactly be something they would want to advertise. Is this friendly audience or youre just not going to get huk lers . Its a little strange. Its funny how he seemed to want the add oration of the boy scouts especially. A lot of people in his position would picture him sitting around camp fires or doing tasks in their community as boy scouts. He pictured them as fans of the apprentice. He talked about youre fired and got them all to cheer his big line, a line that in that case was direct at a member of his own cabinet. The health and Human Services secretary, which is not really tom prices job to do, youre fired. Its interesting it also leaves these kids into the taunting of a subordinate. Its one of the many untrack active things about the boy scouts really. It was a little to use his words sad that he seemed to be wanting to impress these teenage and boys and younger than teenage boys with the idea that he had stories about a guy and a yacht. Right. Very strange story in talking he went to the parties with all the hot people. The whole thing was just a little weird. Lets talk about Something Else that you wrote about. You wrote an article nor the new yorker when Anthony Scaramucci fell in love with donald trump. People may have noticed the similarities between the new Communications DirectorAnthony Scaramucci and donald trump. Like you, the daily show noticed something too. Take a look. Now, in scaramuccis defense, he tweeted. He retweeted this video on twitter which included the line the mooch did his homework. As a native new yorker, im okay with the hand moouchblt. But scaramucci accident i think he understands what you have written about. I dont know if he retweeted your story, but your point is that he has figured out how you exist in trump world. Adore trump and make that adorgs as clear as possible. Talk about loyalty as much as you can. And jet i son what values he may have come in with. He had a lot of tweets about things, gun control, abortion, things like that that dont fit into the trump narrative and he has now deleted those tweets. Whats remarkable is that somebody in the government, Jeff Sessions, seems to share the values of the Trump Administration is in pay lot of trouble because of one value that trump has, which is loyalty. Right. And scaramucci, who also went out yesterday and talked about how maybe he would fire everybody to make sure that leaks stopped, as if that was the only problem. And his obsessiveness about when in his First Press Conference when asked for an actual explanation of how 89 healthcare bill was going to get through the senate, his answer was its going to because the president has great carpal a. Hes a wonderful person and the world bends to him. This idea that success, success, success, which is a word in the boy scout speech that the president keeps using, youre going to be successful. But this is a trump thing that he says and scaramucci again said it i think this morning on tv. Were going to win so much youre going to get tired of winning. Scaramucci, you know, during the prime aerz he wrote something, a column that warned about denim gogary word that the Republican Party was heading towards moral brums or a state of where it was really going to have to examine itself. But he seems to have taken that to mean moral bankruptcy in the sense of restructure, get rid of all your old assets bankruptcy the way wall street people think of bankruptcy. An opportunity. To start over. Great conversation. Thank you. Hoos written an interesting article you should read when Anthony Scaramucci fell in love with donald trump. All right. Up next, another day another tweet from the president blasting Jeff Sessions. How numbered are his days assist attorney general . Well talk about it when we get back. Your brain is an amazing thing. But as you get older, it naturally begins to change, causing a lack of sharpness, or even trouble with recall. Thankfully, the breakthrough in prevagen helps your brain and actually improves memory. The secret is an ingredient originally discovered. In jellyfish. In clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve shortterm memory. Prevagen. The name to remember. Its becoming a thing. Once again, President Trump is attacking his own attorney general. Here is what the leader of the free world posted on twitter this morning. Yp didnt ag sessions replace acting fbi director Andrew Mccabe, a comey friend who was in charge of clinton investigation but got big dollars, 7 hundred,000 for his wifes political run from Hillary Clinton and her representatives. Drape the swamp. The remarkable and possibly untrue statement considering that sessions was the first senator to endorse trump. And remember that sessions is the man the president hired himself and one whom he can fire at any time with or without tweeting about it. Im joined now by nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. I guess this is the dwe on everybodys mind and we go to you because youre the justice correspondent. I dont know if theres a justice answer to this. If the president is so angry at Jeff Sessions, why doesnt he just get rid of him . Well, i dont know the answer to that question. I know its up to the president. By the way, youre right about the tweet. Mccabe did not get money. His wife was running for public offers. She got money from a fund that also helped to support Hillary Clinton. And by the way, Andrew Mccabe was not in charge of the email veflgs. James comey was as the fbi director. But its really up to the president , as you say. The when is did seem a little more con sill to her today, ali, with sarah Huckabee Sanders saying that the president wants Jeff Sessions to stay and do more leak investigations and crack down on illegal immigration. Which is exactly what sessions was doing last night just shortly after he got zblingd by the president in the rose garden he was cracking down on cities that wont cooperate with federal agents to remove people who the feds believe are here illegally. Pete, you have spent time in government and maybe this is just the way things happen now because it is twitter, but in your day or in every other year that youve covered if the president or anybody that high up has an issue with somebody who is cabinet level, there are lots of ways to transition that person out of their job, right . Theres out right firing them, theyre asking for their resignation, theyre impugning them, causing them to resign. This is just an unusual one. Yeah. Im not sure the first two are any different, firing them or asking for their resignation. Right. Theyre about the same. But, you know, weve seen this before. We saw it with william sessions who was the head of the fbi who was eventually basically told to step down by bill clinton over some issues about security improvements at the fbi directors house. But the president expressed his displeasure, but mr. Sessions has made it clear that hes not going anywhere. He believes hes doing the right thing. And i must say hes remaining a loyal soldier. I dont think that Jeff Sessions has had a sipping elpublic appears answer either before congress or in speeches or in news krchlsz where he doesnt at some point praise the president. And he did that today in a Public Statement he put out about his task force hes appointed on violent crime. So he continues to praise hiss boss even though the feeling at the moment may not be mutual. All right. And pete, extra points for pointing out 9 last time this happened was to somebody whose last name is also sessions. You are artful. Okay. Pete williams for us. All right. Lets take a closer look at this. Josh green is a Senior National correspondent for Bloomberg Business week and author of devils bargain. Steve bannon donald trump and the storming of the presidency. Richard painter good to see both of you. Thank you for being with us. Hey, rich, a tweet of yourself caught my attention maybe it was yesterday where you suggested that Hillary Clinton should sue donald trump because shes her name is being dragged through the mud in his attempt to undermine Jeff Sessions. Well, there are limits to what you can say about somebody, even if theyre a public figure. And i have to say that the malice towards secretary clinton and the repeated tweets, the obsession that donald trump has about Hillary Clinton is very strange. And i think hes crossing a line where even under the heightened New York Times versus sullivan standard where a public figure has to show malice and, you know, knowing disregard for the truth, i think hes crossing that line. And theres no reason for it. The election is over. He won the election against Hillary Clinton. I think what Susan Collins said on the hot mike yesterday is true. I mean, hes crazy. Something is going wrong here. Hes responding to the ratio investigation in a very irrational, emotionally distraught way. And thats what the beef with attorney general sessions is about. Its about the russia investigation. There arent any policy differences between the two of them that we know of. Its that he wishes the russia investigation would go away and now it has ensnard his son and his soninlaw and others in his campaign and he wishes that attorney general sessions would have obstructed justice and killed off the russia investigation. It just doesnt work that way. It happened in march the recusal, so its a little puzzling its taken him this long to get fraus straight. I want to just show you the wall street journal, an article it says this is not the article. This is the discussion that President Trump had with the wall street journal. He looks at 40,000 people and probably says what do i have to lose and he endorsed me. So its not like a great loyal thing about the endorsement, but im very frustrated is tr somebody this that white house thats telling him this is a good way to do it. Why anybody would try and get somebody under them this way. Well, first ofel all, its wrong. Jeff sessions did go way out on a limb as i talk about in the book endorsing trump at a time when nobody else would when he was already a pa rya in his own party specifically for his hard line views on immigration. Second of all, i dont think theres anybody in the white house thats putting trump up to this. People in the white house by and large are agast and frustrated that trump is doing this because Jeff Sessions represents trumpism in all it is meant to stand for with more enthusiasm than probably donald trump himself. Richard, there are no legal experts with whom weve talked, and maybe im just not talking to a broad enough group of them, who suggest that Jeff Sessions should have done it differently. In other words, once this issue became one of whether Jeff Sessions had interaction with the russians or what he was doing on behalf of the campaign, his only logical choice was to recuse himself other than resigning. Well, yes. He had to recuse. He was working for the campaign and the campaign now we know that the campaign did collude with the russians. That was a meeting in the trump tower where they did discuss the dirt on hillary and also the sanctions issue if three people there from the russia side wanted the sanctions lifted. This investigation involves the campaign. Attorney general sessions when he was a u. S. Senator had worked with the campaign. He clearly needed to recuse. He did the right thing there. And as i said, the om reason the president wishes he didnt recuse was he wants him to kill off the investigation. And thats obstruction of justice. Hes already fired his fbi director to try to kill this investigation. Its not happening. Josh, let me ask you about this. New york times had an interview with donald trump a couple of days after the election, and donald trump, who had made it through the election, carried on about crooked hillary said well, this is what the New York Times wrote about it, mr. Trump who branded his rival said in an enter roux with reporters and editors at the New York Times that he was no longster interested in pursuing mrs. Clinton in part because he wanted to heel the wounds of a divisive campaign. He said i dont want to hurt the chin tons. I really dont during the interview. Why is to Richards Point why does Hillary Clinton keep coming up . Well, because he seems to be fixated on clinton. And he seems also to be sort of pivoting back and forth between saying, you know, im going to jail crooked hillary which he said in the campaign to saying afterwards, okay, election is over, by gaunls be by gauns and now hes come out and criticizing Jeff Sessions for not having prosecuted Hillary Clinton. So its not a flip flop. Its more like a trim luts and in the meantime trump took a lot of heat from the conservative base and Breitbart News for coming out after the election and doing what obviously seemed like the are right thing to do, thats in the past, were going to move forward now. I think when he gets angry and frustrated he looks at targets. Hes mad at sessions and Hillary Clinton is an old stand by target. So he brings her up to distract from his own problems and misdeeds by trying to direct public attention to her. Thank you for joining us. Josh green is the author of delves bargain. Steve bannon a great read. And richard painter was a chief white house ethics lawyer under president george w. Bush. Coming up next, a major policy reversal delivered, of course, by twitter. President trump bans transgender people from serving in the military in any capacity, saying they wont be allowed or accepted. What does that mean for the thousands who are currently serving our country . And lets have a live look at the senate floor. Thats where the senate is voting now on Health Care Related amendments, which well tell you about on the other side. [ male announcer ] eligible for medicare . Thats a good thing, but it doesnt cover everything. Only about 80 of your part b medical expenses. The rest is up to you. So consider an aarp Medicare Supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. Like all standardized Medicare Supplement insurance plans, they pick up some of what medicare doesnt pay and could save you in outofpocket medical costs. Call today to request a free decision guide to help you better understand what medicare is all about and which aarp Medicare Supplement plan works best for you. With these types of plans, youll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. Plus, there are no networks, and virtually no referrals needed. 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Its looking up, not down. Ng fits being in motion. Boost® high protein its intelligent nutrition with 15 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. Boost® the number one high protein complete nutritional drink. All right. So a procedural vote that was supposed to happen in the senate is not happening now. We believe that what is happening now is a vote on the repeal only bill. This is not a repeal and replace. This is not the skinny repeal. This is a repeal only bill. This is very similar to what Congress Passed in 2015 and what president obama vetoed. It gives congress a twoyear grace period to fix parts of the Affordable Care act or obamacare. This vote, the repeal only, needs 50 votes to pass. This is not expected to pass, but lots of things are not expected, right. Nobody expected tweets about never mind. All right. Another big story that were following today, the president is tweeting that hes going to reinstate a ban on people who are transgender from serving in the u. S. Military. Again, something that wasnt expected. Our very first reaction from the white house came just a little while ago in the press preefg. Listen to sarah Huckabee Sanders. The decision is based on a military decision. Its not meant to be anything more than that, and its simply about obviously its a very difficult decision. Its not a simple one, but the president feels that its the best one for the military. Now, reaction from lawmakers has been pretty uniform. Most of them, not all of them, but most of them coming out against either the ban or the way it was handled in terms of being sent out as a tweet. Hans nichols is at the pentagon for us. President trump in his tweet said on the advice of my generals and military experts had. Yeah. Do we know who those generals and military experts are and was general mattis one of them . Well, we dont. In part because what generals have been saying up to this point was that transgender was not an issue. The chairman of the joint chiefs in staff just in congressional testimony in june said that the policy was working out. They were working to glemt it and what mattis has always send in internal memos as well is hes got two criteria for this, ready nls and lethality. Nothing else matters. Ive heard him say it several times. He doesnt care who people go to bed with, what people do in their private life. He cares about whether or not someone is a good war fighter. Now, we dont know whether or not there have been any private conversations between secretary mattis and President Trump on this issue. When you think of this, ali, think it in two baskets. There are those individuals who are already serving and this was the decision that secretary ash carter, the previous secretary of defense made, saying if you are transgender you are allowed to serve and you can be open about it. The estimates on them are in the hundreds. I know that rand story is out there and the estimate is in the thousands. In terms of Self Reporting, the pentagon hasnt seen those numbers yet. That doesnt mean that theyre not out there. Its just in terms of Self Reporting theyre not at those numbers yet. Theres a separate issue, and that is to do what to do with new recruits. And on the new recruit issue, secretary mattis in the pentagon in general did agree to a sixmonth delay because some of the services didnt quite know how it was going to work when you brought in new recruits, which barracks you put them in. So two separate issues, but no indication the pentagon was really opposed to them in the first place. So former secretary ash carter tweeted out and made a statement to say that, look, ready ngs, capability is really what is important for people in the military. There has been a review by the Rand Corporation prior to the implementation of this allowing transgender people to participate fully in the military that said that the cost wouldnt be substantial. Is there some issue with readiness, preparedness . The only issue on readiness and preparedness is what do you do with someone who is someone downrange, which means in a war zone. They have come out as transgender and theyre told that they can no longer serve . There could be and there likely are active Duty Service Members in difficult parts of the world that were affected by the president s tweet there. One quick thing on the numbers. The rand numbers even the high end of how much this will cost, 8. 4 million that presupposes many more individuals identifying as transgender than what the pentagon says is happening. Right. Okay. Hans, im going to back to you in the next couple of days. We want to talk about north korea. The president billed him himself as a friend of the lgbtq community. Ask yourself who is really the friend of women and the Lgbt Community . Donald trump with actions or Hillary Clinton with her words . I will tell you who the better friend is and some day i believe that will be proven out big league. Hillary clinton crooked hillary takes tens of millions of dollars into her foundation, takes tens of millions of dollars from countries that kill gays and that enslave women. And i will tell you i am far better for women. I am far better for gays. Ironically todays announcement from the president comes on what the white house has declared american heroes week. The president said one of the reasons he made the decision is due to what he said are tremendous medical costs. As i was discussing with hans nichols. The Washington Post found that the pentagon spends triple the amount of money to treat erectile dysfunction than on medical care for the transgender individuals and hans talked about 8. 4 million, the high end of the estimate of what it costs. That would be 0. 001 of the annual budget. For more im joined by aaron belkin, from a Research Institute focusing on Public Policy issues including lgbtq in the military. Good to see you. Is it possible were just trying to figure it why this happened today . Nobody was expecting it. There was a push by the House Republican to end the policy of providing money for the gender reassignment surgery and they were trying to figure out how to get through in in the bill . Is this an aside, President Trump said ill do it this way . Nobody knows aside from President Trump. He decided to reinstitute dont ask dont tell, but for the transgender troops. Its a shock after 20 years that hed try to reinstate such a disaster. Tell me what was a disaster about that and how it translates over to this . There was a great deal of research that shows that dont ask dont tell harmed readiness and it makes sense. If you force people to live a lie then that makes it harder to do their job. If you spend a lot of money training them and then fire them, arabic linguists, fighter pilots, so on youre wasting money. That hurts readiness too. So the president is reinstating a policy that all of the research including the militarys own Research Found harms the military. Aaron, unfortunately i have to cut this short because the vote on health care is happening right now. Well continue this conversation though as soon as we get a moment to do so. Aaron bell kip is the founding director of the think tank focused on areas of gender sexuality and the military. Back to garrett haake. He has news on the senate vote to repeal obamacare . Unless theres a huge surprise of a democrat changing where they stand, the clean repeal will fail when they finish counting the votes. Already so far three nos. Three republican nos on the clean repeal. This is the 2015 fill. When they finish counting the votes the democrats already have enough votes in their column to stop the clean repeal dead where it stands. For the benefit of the viewers who dont have the benefit as you do of being there all the time and keeping track of what all the votes means whats left . Sure. So the we have already dispensed with the repeal and replace plan. Cooked up by Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell over the last several weeks. That was a vote last night that failed. Couldnt get 50 votes thats now set aside. The clean repeal is the bill that was passed in 2015 by republicans knowing that the president would veto it. In fact, he did. Some of the conservatives wanted to see this bill come up again. It has now come up again and it will not get to 50 votes either. Whats going to happen over the next couple of days now well see a huge influx of amendments. Any senator from either party can start offering amendments to this bill. Most of them will be defeated almost right away. Some of them are going to get talked about for a little longer and the Republican Party will try to cobble together anything they can get to 50 votes. That moves this process forward at least to a Conference Committee or working with the house. Now were down to the bare bones what can republicans find 50 votes for that has something to do with repealing obamacare. Lets talk about the president s tweet about senator Lisa Murkowski and her not voting for the motion to proceed yesterday. Has there been much fallout from that . Ali, there has been none. Senator murkowski who is recently reelected, shes popular in alaska, shes not up again until 2022 and by that point donald trump may not be president. This is someone senator murkowski who won a writein campaign. She is extremely popular there. She told kasie hunt shes not worried about the president s tweets. Some truth to the fact that after john mccain made his speech yesterday he somehow provided some support for Lisa Murkowski for having voted the way she did . Thats right. John mccain came to her on the floor of the senate and he said, you did the right thing, you did the right thing for your state. For someone like Lisa Murkowski, really for the senators, having john mccains approval is a good thing. This is little pressure points on the republican senators. I dont know if you remember a couple of weeks ago i talked to lindsey graham. We played the sound bite ad nauseam, if youre looking for cover from the white house, look somewhere else. The republican senators know the president is not going to protect them, so theres no carrot and were seeing from Lisa Murkowski theres no stick from the white house. They dont fear the president s disapproval on bills like this. On the other side of things not fearing the president s disapproval is one thing. The weight that the presidency can bring to bear on things is entirely another. Is there a role for the president to play given that these things are falling apart in the senate . I think its too late for that, to be honest. This is a very senate centric activity here over the next 24 hours. I mean, the senate is going to stay in session more or less around the clock as they debate this. The president has had ample opportunity to come in with specific policy proposals, to explain why the republican plans when there were really specific republican plans in play might be better than obamacare and he hasnt done that. I think the president and his supporters would agree that the president has focused on the problems with obamacare and why something should be done to replace it. But hes not done much on the affirmative side of that of saying, yeah, this would be better. And now this is sort of a going to be a wild west sort of scramble to come up with Something Else. The president interjecting on, you know, this amendment or that point of order over the next 24 hours is not going to be helpful. Thanks for that. Well continue to watch this very closely with you and i suspect well have many more conversations about i. Garrett haake at the capitol. Our cameras caught up with secretary of state Rex Tillerson and he was asked if hes sticking around. Heres what he had to say. Are you staying on as secretary of state . Im not going anywhere . How long are you staying for . As long as the president lets me. How is your relationship with the president right now . Good. All right. He was asked if hes planning to stay on he said hes not going anywhere. How long will you stay for . As long as the president lets me. How is the relationship with the president right now . Good. Well leave it at that. Until we get absolute confirmation that the bill to repeal Affordable Care act has failed, it looks like there are not the necessary votes for it to pass. That does it for me this afternoon. Look for me on twitter, facebook and instagram. Thank you for watching. Deadline white house with Nicolle Wallace starts right now. Hi, everyone, its 4 00 and day eight of the trump sessions smack down. Both men are holding their positions and President Trump is reupping his attacks on the attorney general. Why didnt ag sessions replace mccabe a comey friend who was in charge of clinton investigation, but got big dollars, 700,000 for his wifes political run from Hillary Clinton and her representative. Drain the swamp end tweet. Sessions has no plans to resign and according to reporting in politico has told allies he did not understand the public angst and thought he was doing to his department what trump wanted him to do and recusing himself was a nobrainer. Sessions is enjoying public support from conservative media and from many in the senate. I worked with Jeff Sessions for 9 1 2 years in the senate. Hes one of the most honest people you would ever know. Jeff has been very loyal to the president and i think he deserves loyalty back