joining me wendell potter, former health insurance executive and founder of tar belt.org. we don t know what s in the bill, not allowed. just based on the house bill how hopeful are you the ahca out of the senate will be compassionate and kind as donald trump claims. no hope imaginable. i can t imagine they will come up with anything approaching what the president said. here is why. i think the republicans, and one of the reasons why they are doing this in secret, they know they cannot deliver anything approaching that with what they have been saying and principles guiding discussions or comments on how to fashion a health care system in this country. they clearly want to cut benefits. that will undoubtedly lead to a lot of people losing access to
coverups of the coverups. if it s four coverups that s when the wheel comes off but three we re still okay. a certain point it s insanity and a government serving only the person in the oval office as opposed to the person in the oval office serving the people, then republicans will turn around. republicans right now are dealing with two things that are making it harder for them to stand up to the president and grow a pair which is, one, they have a base that 80% of them you know how i said we don t say unprecedented, grow a pair is not we re not using grow a pair. last i checked when you kick someone in the where you grow a pair they start crying. grow a pair, move on on that one. well, at this point republicans still need to develop that backbone where they are able backbone works. where they re able to say listen, our problem is 80% of our base is still firmly behind the president and we still want to have a chance at getting tax reform and the ahca but fall when t
so you think that there s some attempt to frame the president for this behavior? no, i don t know. i don t know any of the context about why that comment would have been made or not made. but, you know let me ask you this. i understand the sense, the frustration that you have and others in your party share about the sort of distracting nature of this. you guys were still able, of course, to pass the ahca in the house. it looks like the senate is trying to do that. but on this sort of core legal question of obstruction of justice, i mean you would agree that it is possible for a president to commit obstruction of justice, right? well, we had one back in the 70s that apparently did. right. i mean twice articles of impeachment have been drafted against a president for committing obstruction of justice, richard nixon and bill clinton. so you think that is something that the president that would count as a high crime and misdemeanor? but i haven t seen any fact that comes a
i believe you took the same hippocratic oath i did. [ inaudible ] first, do no harm. [ applause ] do you plan to go against the oath that you took by supporting the american health care act or any similar legislation? msnbc s garrett hague joins me now live from louisiana where the town hall was held this morning. garrett, senator cassidy was shouted down in his last town hall. the woman there clearly not very happy. but how was he received in general for this one? reporter: the reception was a little bet they are time. i think that s for two reasons. one is strategic, the other tactical. this time around he had something of his own to sell. the ahca is no more popular here than the rest of the country,
how worried are these folks about their health care plan? i think they re worried. when you talk to folks back home, even though russia and comey and all of these scandals dominate the news, they dominate twitter, they dominate a lot of what journalists are talking about, the things i hear most commonly from folks back home, those who voted for hillary clinton and those who voted for donald trump, is they re most worried about losing medicaid expansion and about losing their health care. it is interesting to step outside of my own twitter bubble when people were so obsessed with what s going on with the russia gate, so called, and actually talked to people and realized that the thing that may be more politically damaging for the president right now is if the ahca passes in its present form. that s the thing that i thing is most politically destructive for him, potentially if it winds up passing by his constituency.