vindicate him. bret: laura. i think they are going to have to resolve it. i think the democrats want this to go on as long as possible because it allows them to continue, getting back to brand, brand donald trump as paranoid or he can tweet anything and see what the reaction is, but what we have to remember that part of what spicer said is true. there was a lot of reporting on the surveillance done of trump associates, former associates, and how those conversations were recorded. whether the dragnet was too wide, who had access to the information of the american who initially was supposed to be masked in those surveillance operations. it would be interesting to know if there were other people swept up in it. donald trump has the ability i think to unmask a lot of it on his own. he could do that. bret: if they wanted to stop, why doesn t he?
that the doj faces today to get proof to the intelligence committee and the house there for this wiretapping claim. reporter: well, it does sound as though from what spicer had to say they have certainly not encouraged the doj to respond in a material way to in letter. and we do know that inside the letter, the house intelligence committee did not say if you do not answer our questions, we will subpoena this information. they didn t say what mig ppen in the event that there was no response. now, i think that you can probably anticipate some public anger potentially from democrats if, in fact, they do get no response at all to this letter. but at this stage, it s not clear that we ll actually understand or see any response or lack thereof. next week we re expecting jim comb y direct comey, director of the fbi, to testify in front of the house
was riffing on twitter on a saturday morning. howard, how do democrats and can they take advantage of all this confusion? well, despite the claims of spicer and trump, et cetera, et cetera, cbo is the most widely respected prognosticator in the country. the spicer quote, of course, is totally inaccurate as it often is. the reason for the shortfall in uninsured addition in insured people because republican governors refuse to expand medicaid, like in texas, which has 22% of adults with no health insurance or children with no health insurance. the cbo missed the mark because the republicans made them miss the mark. so, you know, i find this to be an incredibly distasteful and dishonest discussion. i think the american people know that. the one thing we ve established in this first 50-some-odd days is donald trump does not tell the truth very oft
forth. you saw that today. you saw that on friday as well. some people have some pointed questions to ask. one of the questions was ability the president firing the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york after telling him at trump tower back in december that he wanted him to stay on. we ve wondered what had changed. also why the president had called him a couple days before he was forced to resign his position as the u.s. attorney there in new york. didn t get really too much of a direct answer from sean spicer. he told us to talk tof the department of justice about it, even though there appeared to be a list about it. what i asked about the phone call here s what spicer told us. the president was calling to thank him for his service. this is a standard action that takes place in most administrations. then attorney generals are sent an identical letter. reporter: true, it is standard practice for most
trump, sets the tone of careless loose language. it is particularly infuriating to us and dangerous really in many ways to democracy to not be careful with language especially for the president. there s no execute for what spicer did. that s mentally careless. it s verbally careless. she noushould know those facts. he should know the history if he s going to be a press secretary. since rosen was very explicit in what happened that a wiretap was not put on his phone or his parents tone. that s quite a public statement. let s see if sean spicer corrects the record. give him that. a little time to reflect. i think sometimes in the heat of the moment maybe he made a mistake. i think there s too many mistakes coming out and falsehoods out of multiple