Named to trumps advisory team, i remember thinking there was very little known about this guy. I spoke to Barry Bennett who was on the Carson Campaign before he was with trump. And i asked him how he brought him on. He said papadopoulos emailed him, had his cv out, he was somebody who had worked with the hudson institute. Bennett called his contact there, got a good reference and ended up hiring him though for the campaign. Doesnt know how he ended up at the Trump Campaign. In that group. What we do know that sam cloves was in charge of policy at the time. He was in charge of the list that donald trump had in his pocket the one that he said to the Washington Post editorial board. Right. The if the you remember at that time there was an on the of attention that the Trump Campaigns Foreign Policy advisors, who exactly were they . There was a lot of pressure. The trump people and trump himself kept saying its coming and coming and coming. They finally revealed it. There was a bunch of knobs that nobody knew. Including papadopoulos. I called him a number of time. Never got him on the phone. Very interesting story. You are going to be hearing his name a lot and sam clovess name a lot. Talk about this. Its the art of deflection. Despite many attempts to talk taxes todays White House Press brief was dominated by the shadow Robert Muellers russia probe. I think that papadopoulos is an example of actually somebody doing the wrong thing while the president s campaign did the right thing. What papadopoulos did was lie. All right, when confronted by reporters today, President Trump ignored questions about papadopoulos, his campaigns Foreign Policy adviser at one point. Thank you. Mr. President , whats your reaction to George Papadopouloss guilty plea . Thank you. Your reaction to the guilty plea, mr. President. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, thats how that went. President Trumps Campaign associates and lawyer spent the entire morning down playing the significance of papadopouloss role during the campaign. Listen. I never heard of papadopoulos. He never showed up at trump tower. He was the coffee boy. A low level volunteer who might have attended a meeting of the Foreign Policy advisory team. He was a volunteer with the campaign, served on one of the committees. Ouch, a low level volunteer . A coffee boy . I have to remind you that President Trump, seen in this meeting with papadopoulos and Jeff Sessions in 2016 seemed to have a different thought during the campaign. George papadopoulos, hes an oil and energy consult an. Excellent guy. Kpep excellent guy. Coffee boy, low level volunteer. As i mentioned, nbc news has new reporting from papadopouloss secret plea hearing on october 5th. Prosecutors called the case against him a quote small part of muellers investigation. Joining me now, tom winter, msnbc newss Investigative Reporter who coauthored that piece, and Kristen Welker at the white house in the briefing room. Lets start with you kristen. The briefing just ended moments ago. It was contentious. But when it comes to papadopoulos and mueller, Sarah Huckabee sanders was playing this down. She continued to stick to the line that we are hearing out of white house and from the president himself trying to distance the president from George Papadopoulos despite the thakt that you heard the president during the campaign refer to him as an excellent guy and despite the fact that they were pictured to the in one meeting, an Advisory Council meeting. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was press on specifically how the president knows papadopoulos and how well. Take a listen to how she responded. My understanding is the only interaction he ever had was the one meeting that the Advisory Council gathered together where he was in a large group of other people in the room. And to my knowledge thats the only interaction they ever had. Again, this was a campaign volunteer. He wasnt somebody that was a Senior Adviser as many of you want to bill him to be. He was somebody that played a minimal role f one at all. Sanders was pressed on a number of other issues related to the probe, including why she continues to insist this investigation is going to wrap up soon. She wouldnt give a whole lot of details about why, but she stood by that belief. She was pressed on whether the president still has confidence in his legal team. We know that his former chief strategist steve bannon has been pressing him to get tougher on Robert Mueller behind the scenes. She insisted the president still does have confidence in his legal team and one more point that really rose to the headlines here, i think ali, she was pressed on comment by the chief of staff, john kelly, yesterday, when he said on very different topic when he was pressed about some of those statues of civil war generals like robert e. Lee, he talked about the civil war and said that the civil war could have been prevented perhaps by a compromise. She was pressed on that, whether or not that was insensitive, if she understood why those comments upset some americans. She pushed back very forcefully and said that it was the media that was trying to make more out of those comments than what the chief of staff really meant. That he wasnt essentially trying to revisit history than to reflect what some otherer historians have said. But it did make to a contention end to that briefing. After kelly kept a profile that didnt get political about things, lets bring tom winter in. Tom, Sarah Huckabee sanders referred to this reporting that papadopoulos is just a small part of the Mueller Investigation. Lets listen to what she said about it. Maybe his references in looking more to come between the democrats and the Clinton Campaign since i think if there is any evidence that weve seen to date its between them colluding with other foreign governments, certainly not from our side. Right, i guess, tom thats one interpretation. Thats probably not really the interpretation of muellers investigation. In this 51page court transcript. This was tied to his it was held in secret. The judge closed the courtroom meaning no members of the public could go into it. They had a closed and a secret plea hearing. In that hearing there was a discussion involving federal protors in the defense. They were talking over legal tech any calculates i wont get into here but in that the prosecutor aaron za listenski said this is a small part of a larger more ongoing investigation. So basically what hes saying here is hey weve got this one particular case, your honor, but since this is part of a much bigger investigation and a bigger case that we are looking into we would like for this plea to be sealed. In other words the public not going to know this person pled guilty. This hearing is not going to be made public. We wanted to have that for a period they were arguing at the time of 30 days. It was about 30 days they kept this a secret for. They said hey we want to talk to people and do investigative steps before we say we arrested this guy, we talked to this guy and he is cooperating. He was first spoken to in january. Arrested in july. He pled guilty on october 5th. We found out about it on october 30th. They have had a lot of time, investigators had lot of time with papadopoulos to get the investigation they need and to get him to send the emails or make the calls that he needs. Thanks for your reporting, tom winter in washington. Kristen welker at the white house. After learning he haddan joining the Trump Campaign as anned a as i voor in early march 2016, papadopoulos was in contact with an overseas professor someone he quote understood to have substantial ties to russian government officials. Those communications began around march 169 . Im going to show you. Those communications began around march of 2016 when he joined the campaign. The professor only seemed to be interested in papadopoulos because this new stat with us the campaign. On march 24th, papadopoulos emailed an unnamed Campaign Supervisor and several members the Foreign Policy team to inform them that he had met with professor, and with a female russian national, described as putins niece. Though authorities determine the woman is not in fact the russian president s niece. This was march 24th of 2016. One week later, heres the picture. A lot of people say when you appear in a approximating with somebody it doesnt mean anything. This is actually a meeting of a campaign team. President trump, papadopoulos, jeff session. He sat in that meeting with the president. On april 25th, about a month later, papadopoulos emailed a Senior Policy Adviser for the campaign telling them quote the russian government has an open invitation by mr. Putt for the president to meet him when he is ready. This is ape 259 . The next day, the professor told papadopoulos he learned from quote high level russian government officials that the russians had dirt. They had thousands of emails containing dirt on Hillary Clinton after the professor met with these high level russian government officials. April 26th. On april 27th, the next day, papadopoulos again emailed a Senior Policy Adviser about trump going to russia. Have interesting messages coming in from moscow about a trip when the time is right. Same day he emailed a Highranking Campaign officials to discuss russias interest in hosting mr. Trump. Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right. You are getting a sense of a trend here. May 21st, 2016, papadopoulos emailed another Highranking Campaign officials who we now know was Paul Manafort according to two sources familiar with the charges. The email reads russia has been eager to meet with mr. Trump for quite some time and have been reaching out to me to discuss. Manafort took this email and he forwarded it to colleague without including papadopoulos. And he says lets discuss. We need someone to communicate that dt, donald trump is not doing this trip. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal. Between mid june and mid august of 2016, papadopoulos pursued this off the record meeting between representatives of the Trump Campaign and with putins office. And with just after the now famous meeting in trump tower june 9th between the russians and donald trump jr. , jared kushner, Paul Manafort and these russians, august 15th, just after this, the campaign supervise told papadopoulos i would encourage you along with another Foreign Policy adviser to the campaign to make the trip if it is feasible. On january 27th of this year, papadopoulos was interviewed for the first time by the fbi, lying about his communications, the timing of his communication with this professor. He was arrested in july. And he pled guilty on october 5th. His plea agreement says the government will inform the sentencing judge of papadopouloss cooperation with the investigation, which is going to determine what penalty he pace. They seem to be hanging the idea over him that if he cooperates fully, there may be no sentence whatsoever. Former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman serve on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of president nixon after the watergate scandal. She coauthored the original bill post watergate that allowed for a special prosecutor to be appointed if requested by the attorney general. Good to see you depend. You were with us yesterday when this was all unfolding. Something interesting came up while we were talking yesterday. That is that the president has been seething about this. Hes really, really mad. When he gets really mad about something that happens in the Mueller Investigation we start to hear this talk about getting rid of Robert Mueller. Jay sec la was on Good Morning America this morning. Hes a lawyer and adviser to the president. The president has not indicated to me or anyone else that i work with that he has any intent on terminating Robert Mueller testimony way it would work is you can koenl terminate a special counsel for cause. We dont see any basis for cause. We heard from number of senators including Lindsey Graham who said they are not worried about this because in Lindsey Grahams words there would be holy hell to pay if the president tried to get rid of Robert Mueller without cause. What do you think . There would be holy hell to pay, and that word would be impeachment. Will they do that . Who knows. And the president is you know he is not all together controllable in this. I dont know what hes going to do. Its very dangerous. And i think their effort to down play papadopoulos i mean, it just brings back watergate memories. You know . Ron ziegler, the press secretary, kept calling the watergate breakin a third rate burglary, meaning it was insignificant. Nothing. Nothing. The way they are calling this by a liar, a coffee boy. A coffee boy, a gopher, a nobody. Hes a nothing. But that third rate burglary brought the president down. Papadopoulos could bring this president down. Not that he has that information personally but a he is part of that mosaic. One of the things you left out of that wonderful diagram you had of the events was that there was a person from the campaign who did go to russia after these requests for the meeting with donald trump. And that was carter page. Right. And carter page, and Corey Lewandowski were both on tvn the last 24 hours. Lets play a little of what they had to say. And we can talk about night yes or no, like were you in email chains with papadopoulos . Probably a few, yeah. Were you in email chains about him about russia . It may have come up from time to time, again, you know, there is nothing nothing major. As the Campaign Manager to the Trump Campaign i was receiving thousands of emails a day. I dont know if that was specifically referring to me or was that Paul Manafort . Or was that rick gates or somebody else . This becomes interesting because there arent nos to these answers but people dont really remember. People who otherwise have great recollections of other thing tend not to remember specific discussions about meeting with the president of russia or going to russia. Right, or else they lie about it. I mean, this professor that has now been identified. Yeah. Said oh, he never met with any russian officials. But pfau it turns out that there are pictures or press releases showing that he met with russian ambassador. Its the same thing on june 9th meeting, right, where the woman who said she was working on her own it turns out was in fact dealing with officials from the russian government. Of course. So at some point there are some in the president s circle who are advising him to be cooperative with this investigation and get everything out there and have it end sooner than later. Well, they may be, but the point is this may not be able to end in a way thats helpful or good to him because it looks as though Paul Manafort, who is at the very top of the pyramid, right next to donald trump, was getting emails from papadopoulos, and giving instructions to the campaign as to how to act on them. So papadopoulos wasnt discarded or treated like a nothing or a nobody by manafort, who is the Campaign Manager. He took action based on that. Right. We still dont know. So if manafort, my view is that manafort could his email is a little ambiguous. He could actually have he actually did direct a communication with the russians. What happened in that communication . Who sent the message . Was what the response from the russians . He wasnt saying no, we are having nothing do with the russians. Right, orasje you are the coffee boy, you unshhh be making these overtures. Right. But we are not going to have anything to do with the russians. That rebound treason, against the law. None of that is in any of the emails we have seen. Its just like richard nixon. You go through all those tapes, he never says whats good for the country. I think these are things worth noting. Thank you for your continued help in getting us through this. Elizabeth holtzman is part of the committee that in 1974 recommended three articles of itch peachment against richard nixon. Vice president mike pence is meeting with lawmakers on capitol hill right now but this morning he couldnt stap russia and the question thats on everyones minds. Are these indictments going to derail tax reform . You didnt hear an answer. Thats because there wasnt one. Garrett haake is on capitol hill monitoring the activity there. Garrett, you and casey have been trying to get a response from absolutely everyone for the last 24 hours on russia. And the responses have varied. They have. Its been interesting. On the republican side there does some to be some census around the idea that look mueller needs to be able to continue to do his job. There is a wide amount of zbrooemd disagreement to folks who say that should be codified with other orms of legislation and theories saying there is no way the president is going to interfere with Robert Mueller. They want to see the investigation continue, and the Senate Investigation continue in parallel, and they want to leave well enough alone when it comes to mueller. Pens was asked how much does this complicate the evident to get tax reform done. I can make a counterintuitive argument here that the longer the republicans can keep their tax reform plan out of the sunlight not being talked about in terms of the specifics the easier it will be to get this done. Just like with health care there are a million different went sees with millions of arguments, and if they can settle some of these things before they unveil the formal program tomorrow its easier than doing it in the public eye. I agree with that, the less we talk about tax the better chance they have of getting this done. Did you just talk to roy moore. We tried to. We will show you tape. He is the republican nominee for the senate seat that was former Jeff Sessions seat in alabama. He has a tendency to say incendiary things about muslims serving in congress or whether or not homosexual acts should be legal. He has quite a history. Apparently those are things he was willing to talk about in alabama, not the u. S. Senate. Heres some of our conversation. Do you believe he should not serve in the u. S. House because hes a muslim. Read my article and you will find out what i believe. Can you clarify what you believe right now. Its clarified clearly in the article. Do you believe homosexual acts should be illegal, sir . Im not commenting on any issues right now. That interview went for three or four minutes. Thats the recurring theme. Again, these are issues he has talked about in his past. They are well litigated but apparently wont be litigated here on the hill where he is meeting with republican senators, many of whom he has put in a tough spot. Now they have to decide to what degree they are willing to answer questions about moores record and how it squares with their own and to what degree they are willing to disagree with him but still support him because he is the republican nominee. For many thats been good enough. I read that he said to you reporters dont understand religious liberty where it comes from. It comes from god, not the constitution. Thats right. It was sort of a dramatic moment. I dont think we had time to turn the tape around. That was the one question he answered ifly. Exactly as you said, reporters dont get this. It comes from god, not the constitution. And an elevator door closed in front of our camera and that was the end of this walking interview. Again, that was sort of the one complete sentence of a response from him on any issue that we got. Very interesting. Garrett, good to talk with you we will be talking taxes in the days to come. Coming up next, were you more of the more than 100 million served russian backed contep on facebook during the 2016 president ial campaign . Facebook going cell and twitterives are on capitol hill right now talking about the spread of disinformation on line. Up next, the details we are learning about the hand that russia played in all of that just a year ago as lawmakers say its time for these companies to take action. It really is time for them to step up and recognize that we have a problem. And these companies are going to have to adjust what they do to meet the National Security concerns this nation. Throughout my career, ive been fortunate enough to travel to many interesting places. Ive always wanted to create those experiences for others. With my advisors help along the way, its finally my turn to be the host. When you have the right financial advisor, life can be brilliant. Ameriprise you know whats difficult . Adulting. Hi, guys. Im back. Time to slay no,i have a long time girlfriend. You know whats easy . Building your website with godaddy. Get your domain today and get a free trial of gocentral. Build a better website in under an hour. I just saved thousands in less than a minute, i found out how much home i can afford. I like how you shop for loans the same way you shop for flights online. I didnt realize at lendingtree you can save money on almost any sort of loan. I consolidated my Credit Card Debt with a personal loan. I found a new credit card with 0 interest for 15 months. You just shop, compare, and save. And its all free. Go to lendingtree right now and start saving. Ththe next energyngs toto power our dreams,re will be american energy. Anyone who calls it a hobby doesnt understand. We know that a persons passion is what drives them. [ clapping ] and thats why every memorial we create is a true reflection of the individual. Only a dignity memorial professional can celebrate a life like no other. Find out how at sanfranciscodignity. Com. More revelations in the seemingly unending story of russian interference in the u. S. Election. Representatives from twitter, google and facebook are testifying right now before congress as part of the investigation into russias attempts to spread misinformation during the 2016 election. Two sources have told nbc news that more than 36,000 active russian accounts trafficked more than 1. 4 million tweets during that period. By way, 1. 4 million tweets reached over 200 million people. And facebook testimony submitted monday to the senate Judiciary Committee and obtained by nbc news revealed that russianbacked lexicon tent targeted about 126 million americans through about 80,000 posts to the social media site. Jo ling kent joins me from capitol hill with the latest. This is explosive, these numbers. The numbers are massive. The twitter numbers in particular cover only about three months leading up to the 2016 president ial election. Whereas the facebook numbers, when 126 million americans saw the russia backed content that was over a two year period. Twitter putting out bombshell innocence todays. I just tame from the Senate Judiciary hearing where most of the questions are now being pointed at facebook. The jen re ral counsel answerin the questions. There is no question mr. Russia did or did not influence the election through social media. All three companies, facebook, twitter, google all agree russia did try to influence the election through their social media platforms. What they are focusing on right now is how to get beyond that and got through this. Senators inside are questioning right now on exact hao how the targeted ads worked and how their content spread to so many people. Jo ling kent thanks for your reporting on this. We will continue to follow it closely. Facebook, Google Twitter investors are calling for answers and accountable. Natasha lamb is a managing partner at ar juna capital. Her clients are shareholders and shes acting on their behavior. Thank you for joining us. Whats the concern at this point on behalf of the shareholders . What is the ask . Well, we have been banging the drum on this issue for almost a year now. And you know congress inviting testimony only amplifies the risk that we see facing these companies. You know, we are asking them to be proactive rather than reactive. Were asking for insight into scope and scale of this issue, which were now only learning, you know, as we speak from this testimony the hundreds of millions of americans that were impacted by russiadisseminated propaganda. So we want to both understand that scope and scale and also the efficacy of the companys governance around it. And you know, whether that has been effective to date. I think many could argue it has not. And how it will evolve going forward. You know, as investors and as americans we just can afford to see our information ecosystem you are asking interesting its not just financial stuff. One of the things that stephanie and i always talk about, there will be some pressure from investors. But you are asking in your proposal to facebook for instance for the company to assess the ethical legal and Reputational Risk of content disseminated on its platforms. And this is important because at some point for consumers, regular americans, they are going to say i cant trust this stuff. And the utility value of facebook and twitter and other social media starts to go away. Thats exactly right. I mean we dont want the garbage thats been propagated over these platforms to continue. You know, what well have is a Dumpster Fire of misinformation and hate on our hands. Yeah. And the fact is that users will leave these platforms as quickly as they joined them. I mean, you know, the titans of the tech world this is not written in stone. At one i want po, my space and aol were at the top of the world. And today im sure that there are many young people that dont each know who who those companies are or what they did. We see both a user trust issue. We see just a reputational issue here. The Regulatory Risk for these companies has increased dramatically. I mean weve already seen it abroad. Weve seen germany levee fines. Sure. For not taking down illegal content in a timely manner. Watch seen the uk say they are looking to regulate these companies as news organizations, not as, you know, the neutral tech platforms that th s thas td to be. Nobody ever wants to regulate themselves, but the danger is that somebody will come in and regulate them. Lets listen to the hearing going on right now. Between violent groups and groups that may have some connection to them, more more political arms. We have seen many instances of that. There are teams that have to tease out the nuances and understand how the groups are acting and how they are coordinating at times. But there are teams that research and study these issues and help us fine and implement new policies around there them. Mr. Stretch can you tell us just a little bit about facebooks Human Capital solution to the same problem . Yes, thank you senator for the question. So today across our Safety Security and product and Community Operations teams we have about 10,000 people who are working on safety and security generally and we are committing to investing more and doubling that number by the ends of 2018. On the question of extremist content generally i think you raised a really important point, which is that we need to understand the behavior, and we need to have the capacity both as a company and as an industry to be able to track it and eradicate it. So we have thousands of people who who as part of their job on a regular basis are attempting to keep terrorism off of facebook. We have 150 people who do nothing else. Thats their job. And across that 150 people, they have as mr. Edgette suggested in our case as well significant expertise in understanding jihadi threats. They cover about 30 separate languages. One of the things that each of us has done as a company has worked together to make sure that the industry is sharing threat information and sharing expertise and also providing that information to other Smaller Companies that may not have the same level of resources. We all agree not just that terrorism doesnt have a place on facebook. Terrorism has no place on the internet. And we are trying to lead the industry to make sure that we are all doing our part to address that threat. And the last point ill make is that it also requires an ongoing dialogue with Law Enforcement w the government. Because there is a great wealth of information in the government as it tracks these issues that they can share with that. That in turn gives me some optimism as we address the question of foreign interference in the election. We know how to Work Together to address a threat on the internet both as an industry and working with government. I think if we bring that same concerted evident to bear looking into this interference with the election then we will make some progress. Thank you senator. Thanks mr. Chairman and thanks to all of you on the panel. Mr. Stretch, last night 19 major civil rights organizations sent a letter to facebook which grand their quote deep concern regarding ads, pages and hateful content on your platform used to divide our country and in particular used to promote antimuslim, answer black, antilikt animus. They cited things including a russian facebook candidate that not only promoted antiimmigrant information on line and promoted a rally in august of 2016. The letter detailed a reported situation in which facebook offered its expertise to a bigoted Advocacy Group by creating a case study testing different formats and advising how to enhance how to reach the groups antirefugee campaign in swing states following the 2016 election. What is your response to this letter . Is it true that facebook assisted an antimuslim effort . Thank you for the question. Let me start by saying that the content that we have produced to this committee and that was run by these fake accounts mask raiding as real authentic identities is vile. Its vile for precisely the reason you say. Its particularly exploitative insofar as it was directed at groups that have every reason to expect us to protect the authenticity of debate on facebook. In terms of what were doing in response, we are reviewing and tightening our ad policies. And theres two particular changes that were making. One is, we are we are tightening our content guidelines as they apply to ads with respect to violence. So much of the content that is so disturbing is involves threats of violence towards communities, and that has no place on facebook. And it certainly has no place regardless of source . Regard yes, regardless of source. Regardless of source. Exactly. We want our ad tools to be used for political discourse, certainly. But we are not we do not want our ad tools to be used to inflame and divide. Thats the point im trying to get to. I read that set of facts to you. The trigger word was a russian facebook account. At which point most of us would say hold the phone. What is russia doing promoting antiimmigrant, antirefugee sentiment in the united states. Now take the word russian out of it. A facebook account that promotes antiimmigrant, antirefugee sentiment in the united states. I dont know if you would characterize that as vile. I sure would. These groups would. What im frying to get to is this, i think when we get to the word russian, fake, trolls, bots, so forth, we know the starting point is a trigger. Something needs to be done. The second thing we know is if it includes a reference to a political candidate or a party, then its in a category, too, of electioneering. Ill let senator klobuchar address that issue. And third question gets into vile content. How are you going to sort this out consistent with the basic values of this country when it comes to freedom of expression . Its a great its a great question. I dont i dont suggest its easy. We do value personal expression. And when that is the purpose of your service, there is going to be content that is objectionable even beyond objectionable. Where we are really trying to draw the line is with respect to advertising content and using our tools to promote messages im going to stipulate these are all ads. I want to stipulate that at the beginning. Yes. They are all ads. They are being purchased to effect on outcome of an election or voter isntment or to mislead voters. Id like to ask your colleagues to address this as well. Mr. Edgette, what does twitter say to those . Those ads have no place on twitter. Our ads policy addresses those things. If there is inflammatory content that some even would finned to be upsetting thats not the type of ad we want running on twitter. We distinguish between organic tweets which is those that you or i or anyone here can tweet from their phone or computer from advertising. Advertising are tweets that are serving to someone who hasnt asked to follow the content, hasnt asked to be part of that conversation. We draw a hard line on making sure advertisements are not inflammatory. I comment you and endorse that but agree with senator sass that when it comes to drawing those lines it is a challenge for us and we do it for a living. I think it will be a challenge for you as well. Mr. Salgado would you like to comment. I agree it is a challenge. We have policies to keep our ads of high quality, and the proposals we have made and we will be implementing around election ad transparency i think reflect that as well. Thank you mr. Chairman. All right of we have been listening in to hearing of the social Media Companies on capitol hill. We were having a conversation with natasha lamb managing partner at ar juna capital where we are starting the see that investors are expressing concern about the reputational and the ethical and Regulatory Risk of these companies if they dont get in front of what is become a very, very, very, very serious matter as we have been learning in the last 24 hours. Earlier today on capitol hill there was other testimony. Femaed a strais strafr brock long testified in front 69 Homeland Security committee in response to what he called a historic hurricane season. I have been in office for 132 days. For 70 of those days we have been actively responding to harvey, irma, maria and the extraordinary California Wildfires as well. Each one of these events that i just spoke of could truly be catastrophic events, stand alone events, but they happened in rapid succession of a 25day period, who is obviously unprecedented. Long says the u. S. Is spending more than listen to this, 200 million a day responding to the recent hurricanes and wildfires that and fema is going to need more money thats whats already been set aside by congress. He also said he needs Legal Authority from congress to rebuild and strengthen puerto ricos electrical grid. Several are still without power more than 40 days since the hurricane made land fall there. Gabe . We are here in pala seco. Behind me is a plant that is controversial here in puerto rico. An aging power plant that was shut down before Hurricane Maria for years. They thought it wouldnt be able to make it through maria. Its still standing. Turbines and generators have been brought in and its expected to help bring up power to part of san juan. Almost 70 of the electrical grid here in puerto rico is still down. The familiara administrator was on the hill testifying. So were representatives from the army corps of jeers. What came up is the White Fish Energy contract, the controversial 300 Million Contract that is facing audits and congressional investigations. Brock long was asked about that White Fish Energy contract. So were the other folks that were testified. They basically said we had nothing to do with it. Take a listen. Zhao sure. Let me be clear. The white fish contract was not a fema contract. There were many things wrong. There was also language in there that would suggest that the federal government would never audit white fish, there is not a lawyer inside fema that would agree to that type of language. Reporter of course the governor of puerto rico on sunday called for that contract to be canceled. Thats being worked out in the next couple of weeks. Officials here in puerto rico are now having to scramble to find other alltive tiffs. And the governor is blasting the army corps of engineers. He says there is only seven brigades here on the island he is frustrated with the response. We spoke with them a short time ago and they basically say look we got our assignment in late september we are working as hard as we can to make this happen but it is an extreme logistical challenge to restore this power grid. Puerto rico is an island. Difficult to get resources here. Many people are skeptical here that they are going to be able to reach the governs goal of 95 power restoration by mid december. Gabe gutierrez from puerto rico. Breaking news. Police are responding to reports of gunfire blocks away from if World Trade Center memorial. N. Y. P. D. Posted on twitter one person is in custody. Its unclear if anyone has been injured. We will bring you developments as they come in. But we are following developments in Lower Manhattan where there are reports of shots fired. We are going to be right back. Stay with us. You are watching msnbc. A tiny sword . Bread. Breadstick . A matchstick a lamppost coin slot no . Uhhh. 10 seconds. A stick a Walking Stick eiffel tower, Mount Kilimanjaro ding time sorry, its a tandem bicycle. What . What . as long as sloths are slow, you can count on geico saving folks money. Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. Im ginnwith chantix. Smoking it takes a lot of planning to be a smoker. Its like when am i gonna be able to sneak out of here and go have a cigarette . I just knew i had to quit, and chantix was the method that actually worked for me. Along with support, Chantix Varenicline is proven to help people quit smoking. Chantix reduced my urge to smoke. When you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. Some people had changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, or suicidal thoughts or actions with chantix. Serious side effects may include seizures, new or worse heart or blood vessel problems, sleepwalking or allergic and skin reactions which can be lifethreatening. Stop chantix and get help right away if you have any of these. Tell your Healthcare Provider if youve had depression or other Mental Health problems. Decrease alcohol use while taking chantix. Use caution when driving or operating machinery. The most common side effect is nausea. Thanks to chantix, i did it. Ask your doctor if chantix is right for you. Many insurance plans cover chantix for a low or 0 copay. For all that we have talked about obamacare, you should remember that open enroll men for obamacare insurance plans against tomorrow. If you have plans through your workplace, they probably began early this week. The obamacare thing, though, tell somebody if you think they are on obamacare because the white house has cut the advertising budget for the program from 100 million to 10 million, this means some people may not know it started. This could reduce enrollment by over 1 million individuals over the next years, which matters because questions remain on the future of health care and what it should be in this country. Im joined by former testry auto adviser under president obama. Steve, good to talk to you. One of the reasons we are having this conversation now is because of what the future of health care looks like. I think what we realized is we dont have a good situation. It has probably been made worse by the meddling around trying to repeal and replace and Bernie Sanders and team have come up with this worder medicare for all, which is another word for a single payer system. You dont like that . You think its dangerous for democrats to go down this path . I think its bad politics and bad for society. Lets start about the bad politics, slogans work. Until people figure out what they mean. And then they dont. Hillary care was a form of single payer. Everybody was excited and once they understood it and realized it wasnt what the they wanted. Half of americans get insurance from their employer. I will say as a canadian i know what that could look like on the other end. Its not the only system of health care, but its the single payer system does work to a great degree in canada, the uk uk and other countries. You know more about canada, i know a little bit about the united kingdom. And it works okay. But they are very disciplined about what they spend money on. If you are 80 and you break your hip or need a hip replacement they are probably not going to give it to you. They have very, very analytical assessments of the cost benefit analysis of this these kinds of things. People here one of the problems in america is people think that anybody should be able to get treated for anything at any stage of their life no matter the ka cost . Single payer systems they rationalize health care toward the end of life. Exactly. Put another way, more than half the you and me on health care is going to be spent in the last year of our life, trying to prolong our life for a few weeks or months. And you get into incredibly expensive drugs that youll need for an extended period of time. We should accept the consequences, which is as you point out, a lot of our Health Care Dollars go to these kinds of purposes. Its a good answer for now, for the democrats, you think they should stay away from it and say what . That well fix obamacare . Even though it polls okay at the moment, if you go and ask people, are you willing to give up your insurance through your employer and go here . I dont think anybody really wants to think about that. Well continue this conversation again, we have lots to discuss, and i do have breaking news for you right now in Lower Manhattan, multiple people are dead, several are injured following an incident in Lower Manhattan. We do have reports of various things that havepened in the vicinity of the stiverson high school, in Lower Manhattan, the west side highway has been closed from 34th street south, theres a great deal of police activity. We are still trying to get information on whats going on. I started my show with tom winter who has been dealing with other matters but he joins me now, what do woe know about whats happening in manhattan . We do know that several people are dead, several people are injured. Its a scene that has had ended at west street and chambers street. Theres no indication this has anything to do with the World Trade Center. What isnt cheer right now is that we have a truck at the scene, its a large truck that you might get from a home depot, and it appears to have home depot logos on it. The truck has been stopped there and what isnt clear at this point is whether or not this is some sort of an incident where a truck ran over some people and that they engaged with police either in gun fire or there was gun fire leading into it. Youre looking at a picture on your screen. I believe the person whos back is to us is the head of the Critical Response team. Right now their know that they have at least one person dead, they know that there are several people that have been injured and right now the nypd is trying to figure out where did this start and what specifically happened here. We do know that one person is in custody and at this point it doesnt appear as if theres anything else active happening in this. But we have to wait until the police start to get a sense on whats happening in Lower Manhattan. I dont know how much of a chance you have had to read into whats going on. We are seeing pictures both this video and the still pictures we have seen of that rental truck, with the home depot icons on it. What do you understand see far . Well, a very clear report by tom winter there, what you look at is this an accident, is its somebody drunk, is it somebody berserk . The facts that is added here is that theres a rental truck and theres a guy with a paint ball gun or a beebee gun shooting at pedestrians. It could be terror related. You know, ali, a lot of these attacks that we have seen are involving these rental vehicles. Those home depot trucks are 21 a day, easy to get, easy to rent. And if we go back and look at some of those vehicle attacks in europe, some were stolen, but some were rented. Jim, we have reporting that the mayor is on the scene. Louis berg dodorff is on the sc there. We saw a bunch of people running, screaming just outside my window, we went outside to look and see what was happening and there were multiple pedestrians, a cyclist on the ground and again, this is much further up on chambers street where canal street meets the west side highway. They were doing cpr on one cyclist who was laying on the ground, he seemed unresponsive. And it seemed like there was such a long line of people that were injured that the police and the First Responders didnt really even know where to begin. It was actually quite terrifying. But i have to say, that the response, how quickly the nypd and the fdny who were on the scene was pretty impressive. Ron, what have you got . Reporter wewell, theres a big crowd here and the police have the area cordoned off for several blocks, theres a lot of stories about whether there was a gun or not and whether people were hurt or not. Thats what we were trying to sort out. As we were arriving, i did see people going in the opposite direction, who were very distraught, very upset. Theres a lot of confusion down here, a lot of people are very concerned about whats happening, were still a couple of blocks away from the World Trade Center and were trying to get as close as possible. At this point, when the mayor gets down here, and the police chief gets down here, theyll give us a sense of whats happening, but as of now there are people who are very upset and very eworworried and are i tooing to get some answers. These pictures coming in are showing us the theres bikes on the ground, what louis was telling us about people on the ground. We know we have multiple people that are dead, so at least two people dead. It we have multiple people injured. A truck that was involved in this incident has ended up at chambers and west street, thats in lower hannems bee manhattan. We this is a bike path, it is wise enough for a vehicle to go down, but we dont know if this is some sort of horrible accident yes somebody lost control of their vehicle, or if this is an intentional act. If louis is at canal street, it appears this could have gone on for a long time. We dont know if there was a shooting involved, if the suspect himself was shooting or if those were just some initial reports from the scene. I know the nypd have dispatched several of their helicopters from brooklyn, so theyll be doing overhead searches, we know that the mayor is there, it appears that the commissioner may be down there as well. We should be maybe getting a preliminary briefing in a little bit from the nypd, but the bottom line, we know several people are dead, several people are injured. And there may have been a shooting involved in this, and right now police are doing their best to figure out whats going on. Robert boyce, the tall gentleman with the white hair. Hes been with the department for a long time. Hes actually due to retire in the next year, but hell be the one who oversee this investigation, to figure out, a, what actually happened this afternoon, if somebody needs to be charged, if there was an intentional act. And looking at this bike path that i know fairly well, this appears to be an incident that went on for some considerable distance. Louis, did you say you were at canal street . Reporter im at canal street, and it looks like police have walked twotlo or three bl. It appears it was going south, because if people are injured at louiss location, it went downtown, you can see one location. Im going to pause here, im just using this as a reference, theres not at this point to indicate that the World Trade Center is any part of this. But people who have been to new york city before, this is a bike path that stretches the entire west side of manhattan. Its very popular, 3 59 on the east coast, pretty popular time for people to be out and about running and biking on this path. So potentially there were a decent amount of people who would have been using it. Were getting information coming in as we speak. Im going to hand it over to my friend Nicole Wallace who will pick up this breaking news now. Hi, everyone, were following breaking news in downtown manhattan, new york city, multiple people are dead, and several are injured, according to a senior new york city official. Savannah th