terror cell. they re also looking into his father s ties to a libyan militant group linked to al qaeda. back to hardball. welcome back to hardball. president trump ended a relatively successful trip to the middle east and has now pivoted toward the more daunting task of wooing those in europe he s been critical of in the past. he s overseas right now while the investigations swirl here at home into his campaign s connections with russia. tonight the new york times reporting that months before the election last november, u.s. spies learned top russians had discussed ways to use donald trump s advisers to influence him. let s bring in the hardball roundtable. sabrina siddiqui, simon marks, and molly ball, a writer with the atlantic. thank you all. this is another one of those late afternoon stories that just cracks across the headlines. apparently the russians were trying to influence the trump people. we now have that on the record. yes. this adds more specificity to
but we nknew russians were getting involved in the campaign. it wasn t unwitting. there s still the possibility. i think what the former cia director was saying in his testimony yesterday and what is not disputed by this report is that trump himself could have been a sort of unwitting patsy. of whom? of these much more sophisticated oop perative who had an agenda, who were in contact with the russians and why doesn t he say so, then? i don t know. instead of lawyering up. i don t speak for donald trump. see, nixon directed the wide-ranging activities. [ overlapping voices ] nixon had a very difficult situation. he knew about the break-in of the psychiatrist s office. he couldn t step back and say, oh, i didn t know this. but it seems to me trump, if you re right, should be able to do that. he may be laying the ground work for that. twice now he s drawn a distinction publicly between himself and the meshmbers of hi team. there s a very clear path for
analysis of the beill. that report tells us how the legislation actually affects how many people go without health insurance. now today the republicans have the report card from the cbo, and it doesn t look like an a. under the gop health care plan, 23 million more people would lose their health coverage over the next decade if the house gop plan becomes law. 23 million. it also says that the macarthur amendment, which allows states to waive out of protected people with pre-existing conditions and provide essential health benefits would destabilize the health care markets for those in non-group plans in one sixth of the country. senator tammy baldwin is a democrat from wisconsin and u.s. congressman tim ryan is a democrat from ohio. both represent states that voted for donald trump over hillary clinton. senator, what do you make of the fact of this vote, this new cbo report just how today that 23 million people will basically be dropped from health care coverage if the senate does wh
headli headlines. american spies collected information last summer revealing that senior russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over donald trump j. trump through his advisers. your thoughts? what does it tell us tonight? well, i think that again you have to look to the actual actions out of the trump administration and the platform with respect to ukraine changing while he was the nominee. you know, flynn discussed the removing u.s. sanctions on the day that obama extended more sanctions against russia. it s only as this inquiry gained more attention that the white house backed off of, you know, that promise to maybe alleviate some of those sanctions. so there s clearly an attempt to certainly shift the prospectiveture, the u.s. position toward russia, and again you can see the influence so they wanted specific things out of our new government. they knew there would be a new government. they were betting properly hillary would win squ
ukraine. they got something for their money. the words out now according to the new york times, they went out there to try to influence trump through his people. so buying somebody to get to trump and then of course the guy denies ever getting money from the russianrussians. if it starts with the russians, it goes to trump s people, and trump gets influenced, i don t know how you exonerate anybody in that daisy chain. i m not a lawyer and i m not a trump spokesperson. but i do think that there is if there is a smoking gun that shows that donald trump personally was directing this activity or was apprised of this activity, even if by your standard you would have picked up on it, you think he should have known, if that smoking gun exists, it either has not leaked in all these other things that have leaked, or it hasn t been found yet. and that s what you keep hearing trump saying when he says no collusion at least on my part. i don t know a lot of this is totally legal.