views of putin and russia. after being a back bencher for russia on policy for years, he told me he thinks he can bring some members there and he wants to work actually with the russian legislature to try to coordinator an agenda between the two countries and comes as the investigations into the hacking and intelligence issues. a congressman close to trump who wants to head to russia next month. robert, fine. plan a trip to the duma but why not plan a trip to meet with vladimir putin we know nothing happens there without vladimir putin s final say. what negotiations will he bring given he thinks everything russia has done is faultless? he didn t rule out a meeting with putin which would put the trump administration in an interesting position to have a subcommittee chairman in the house and in essence making foreign policy with russia as tillerson is going through his confirmation process on capitol hill. the one thing about rohrabacher
there is a broader strategy. i agree with david ignatius, it s not a bad thing to keep china off balance. you need to have that follow-up strategy. if he wants to trade taiwan for tougher actions with north korea, that is worth it and i do know, we all know that when he was with barack obama in the first meeting, barack obama said, yeah, you worry about obamacare all you want. you re going to be worried about north korea the first second you sit in my chair. i have to worry about actually going to break because alex is yelling in my ear. coming up, the washington post robert costas joins with his latest reporting on how the house ethics amendment passed in the first place despite top leaders weighing against it. then we will talk about the new congress when we return. hey, need fast heartburn relief?
things of far greater importance? #dts for draining the swamp. house members went into a emergency meeting in the basement of the capitol. let s bring in msnbc political analyst robert costas. have you a remarkable piece in the post today. walk us through this. it started monday night. a lot of lawmakers were coming back to washington from the break and bob goodlad forced together a proposal that many members have privately long wanted and get rid of this office of congressional edgics which is an independent watchdog within the house to police members and make sure they are not stepping over the line but a lot of members are grumbling to me and other reporters for years about this group. they don t like the excrete knew and other watchdogs on the outside say it s a great group and they got rid of it. bob, what is their chief complaints and do any of their
complaints seem to have credence based on what you ve heard? their chief complaint is allegations can be made against them through this office of congressional ethics. and oftentimes they feel vulnerable to the allegations being out there should they be put forward by a staffer or someone else and they feel like their political careers are put at risk when these allegations come to light. and they don t feel like they have a full table, a full opportunity to make their case. robert, what did paul ryan know about this amendment monday evening and when did he know it? speaker ryan knew about what goodlat and others were up to push this amendment long before monday night. ryan argued against it, as did house majority leader kevin mccarthy. they were in kind of a corner politically. as much as they argued to the face-to-face conversations of their members to not do this, they knew there was such an appear tied to get rid of it.
difficult to get somebody off the ballot so i think that s why it was released now but this will be difficult to explain to some of the voters we still need to pick up. i want to go around to robert costas who joined donald trump speech tonight in new york city. cost at that reporting it will not be a dropout speech. want to go around the table, expectations of what we might expect to hear. katie, you are our resident expert on all things donald trump. what would you expect to hear from donald trump in that speech tonight? somebody who describes himself as a survivor. somebody who says he used to be an entertainer. somebody who says maybe i made a mississippi take in the past, but i m going to fight for you, i m the champion for your cause. i m the change candidate. if you don t vote for me, you re going to get more of the same. hillary clinton is going to continue doing what she has been doing for the past 30 years, 40 years, in office. she hasn t been able to be effective. she ha