forgotten, the victims in atlanta. i felt like watching your whole show tonight. that s what it was about. so our bill is about not forgetting our democracy. so go ahead. thank you so much for saying that. there have been so many people who have brought poignant words and made us think tonight and who inspired us to be better people. you chair the senate rules committee that will hold a hearing on the bill next week. and listen, the stakes couldn t be any higher. republicans are trying to suppress the vote all over the country. how will you get this bill passed? that s the central question. let s start with the good. the good is that for the first time, thanks to those incredible senators from georgia, warnock and ossoff, we have the gavel. i have the gavel. jeff merkley, the author of the bill, we have two new senators, and we ll get this bill through the committee. we ll have the first hearing ever in the senate. it has only been in the house. they passed it in the hous
great profit. mark? scott, did anybody get rich off of this? a lot of people got rich. all the way from drug dealers on the streets all the way up to the pharmaceutical companies. this is a $13 billion a year industry. a lot of people were making a lot of money. a lot of people were turning a blind eye to what was happening. did they lobby congress to try to keep that branch from doing anything about it? of course. the pharmaceutical industry, we found, joe, spent about $106 million lobbying on this bill and other legislation in capitol hill. and it was also written by an industry lawyer. you know, you were up there on the hill and i imagine you saw some of this firsthand. lobbyists write a lot of legislation. and a lot of times it doesn t have a huge impact. but to write a piece of legislation at the height of the opioid epidemic that takes away the most important enforcement tool takes your breath away.
i m thinking of the entire international community. not north korea? well, including north korea. joe, i know you were not a huge supporter of the deal but what s the is there one productive outcome of pulling out of the deal? first, it s hard to follow up. the iranian foreign minister giving lectures about people not being able to trust the united states word. that aside, i want to talk about the foreign policy side of this with richard haas and david ignatius in a minute. first, mark halperrin, i have to go to you. perhaps this is the weakest leadership i ve ever seen in my lifetime, in my 54 years. and i ve been following politics for almost 50 of those 54 years. you have a president who has three of the most significant issues before him, health care reform. he punts it to congress and then he goes, well, i m not going to
so they can t threaten american society at large. but time is not our friend here. the timelines are not working in our favor. joe? so, mark, what is the reaction on the hill? what has been the reaction on the hill, obviously, to a lot of the crazy things that have been coming out of the white house? rex tillerson this weekend. i mean, channeling freddy finder until the last teardrop falls, until the first bomb drops. i ve never heard a secretary of state say that before. i m just wondering, how are republicans going to respond to this on capitol hill when there are already questions about the president s stability and his ability to manage us through a nuclear crisis? as you know, when the house or senate is out you don t get much reaction. the senate is back. it will be harder for republican senators to dodge questions about the flack between the president and bob corker last
band. this is a big, bloated administration, and there s nothing conservative about them. and mark, the thing that schmidt said, steve schmidt said the last thing donald trump wants is a democratic house. that could issue articles of impeachment. i ll tell you a close second would be a hostile republican senate that when the articles of impeachment pass the house, and they really have to look and see if donald trump s fit to be president of the united states, that do you want bob corker? do you want susan collins? do you want mitch mcconnell? do you want ben sass? do you want all these people the president has insulted, jeff flake, all these people the president has been hostile to passing judgment on this republican party? he s not really a republican. he s nothing ideologically. but he s, again, every day, mark, he s declaring war against