Crippling parts of the country and what does the president s newfound friendship with the Top RepublicanMitch Mcconnell mean for the brewing tax battle on capitol hill . And another question, new questions about the attack on u. S. Troops in niger that left four Service Members dead. Why did the president claim his predecessors didnt call families of fallen u. S. Soldiers and a time to compare and contrast. Lets get to it. First to the white house, congressman tom marino dropping out a week before the president is set to declare the Opioid Crisis a National Emergency and also just two days after a scathing report that marino championed a bill that hampered dea efforts to fight that very crisis. Joe johns with the white house has this for us. Joe, what is the president saying about this . You know, kate, tom marino of pennsylvania, was one of the first people to get behind the president in the campaign and when the time came for the white house to pick director of drug policy control, marino was it. Now, hes out. The nomination has been withdrawn. The president talked about that this morning on the radio. Listen. There was a couple of articles having to do with him and Drug Companies and i will tell you, he felt compelled, he feels very strong about the opioid problem and the drug problem, which is a worldwide problem, but its a problem that we have, and tom marino said look ill take a pass, i have no choice, i really will take a pass, i want to do it. So the story that did all this was a Washington Post 60 minutes report citing, among other things, the fact that tom marino in his role as a congressman from pennsylvania, had been the key supporter if you will of a bill that essentially undermined the ability of the dea to get rid of or at least control shipments of opioids. A big problem for him and a big problem for this administration. Hes out now. Back to you. Joe, absolutely, now weve got to look for another nominee. Thank you so much. Now to the next battle on capitol hill, your taxes and does this newfound romance between the president and Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell guarantee a much needed legislative win in this big area. Sunlen serfaty is following the latest on the hill. They stood side by side in the rose garden yesterday. Everything now cumbayah, rainbows and unicorns with regard to their tax reform dream . Not yet. They still have a long way to go, but i tell you what this week they will face a critical first big test to see what direction all this is going to go. Senate republicans, they need to pass a budget. Thats important for the larger issue of tax reform because if the budget passes, that pavings the way for paves the way to pass tax reform with only republican support. There are still a few republicans undecided on the budget. Many say they have concerns like senator john mccain who echoed that moments ago, senator rand paul, they say theyre worried about the budget and want more answers before they potentially vote on it as early as thursday of this week but Republican Leaders here in congress are confident they can cobble together the votes they need to pass a budget and thats something President Trump echoed moments ago in this radio interview. Now we are there and, you know, i think rand will be there and lets see what happens, but we have the votes coming up starting on thursday. Budget is phase one and the vote is phase two and if the republicans dont do it, its it would be disgraceful to them. And looking forward even beyond the budget this week that move for them to have to write the legislation, get all of the ts crossed and is dotted in congress, and we know theres a lot of interparty battling going on on what the specific of the policy on tax reform will look like. Huge obstacles ahead. Great to see you. Thanks so much. Now the deadly attack on u. S. Service members in niger, the president is facing backlash this morning after when he was asked about this attack, his comments about how and when he makes contact with families of the fallen in comparison to his predecessors, not to be lost here, there are many more questions circling about what exactly happened in that operation that left four Service Members dead. Lets get to Cnns Barbara Starr at the pentagon with much more. What are you learning . Good morning, so many questions for the families of the fallen. The u. S. Military has opened a full review, two weeks later, still looking at this, trying to figure out exactly what did happen. This review will look at the timeline hour by hour, how it unfolded, what everybody did, what everybody knew. What was the intelligence that these military members led by green berets, the 12man team, had going into a village in niger where they were only supposed to meet with locals, and then depart. There was no indication of combat. Why didnt they have the intelligence that they were walking into an ambush of 50 isis fighters. When the ambush broke out, there was confusion on the ground. They had to wait 30 minutes for overhead support from french aircraft. And one of the major issues is what happened to sergeant la david johnson. 25 years old. He was one of the soldiers killed there. We have his picture. I know we put it up a minute ago. Lets show it again, his body was not recovered for 48 hours. It was out there in the brush, if you will. They do not know how he became separated. They dont know how they didnt find him right away and bring him back with everyone else kate . Key questions, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Joining me to discuss this and much more mike brown of south dakota. Thank you for coming in. You bet. A lot happening this morning, lets try to get to some of it at least. The president s drug czar nominee this morning, congressman tom marino, withdrawn his name from consideration as weve been reporting. This came after just after this huge report by cbs and Washington Post over the weekend. Whats your reaction to this . Well, first of all the president had made a nomination, nomination has been withdrawn, i think the fact that hes actually directly in touch with legislative leaders who have discussed it with him, is a step in the right direction. The president has made some very good nominations in the past. The senates role on this is to advise and consent. Sometimes not to consent, simply to advise. Thats whats happened in this case. What should happen to this law thats at the center of all of this . Do you think it should be repealed . Go back in and see what the other items were that were within the law and whether or not there was an attempt made to begin with to modify it or was it simply one of the things that looked good to everybody, and it was passed by unanimous consent, meaning people assumed that everybody else had looked at it. Thats what happened here. Everyone ive heard talking says it went through committee, dea pulled back any objections they had, doj didnt have any objections, it passed by u. C. , we moved on. No such thing as a perfect law and when you find them, when you have identified a problem some place go back and fix them. Dont hide from them. Walk back in and look at it and say where did we make a mistake, what else is in it that should be corrected and move forward. Youre on board with changing this law repealing it as some democrats are pushing a bill right now . I think what you do is take a look at it and you will allow it to go through committee process, you get the testimony on it, then you make a decision based upon what you learned. But you dont simply walk on in and say, gee, we have a news report here that something is wrong on it we will totally stop in the middle. Do it through a regular process. And thats the way it should be with the vast majority of the laws weve got here. There is no such thing up here as a law which is perfect and if we made a mistake, we go back in and we fix it. Same thing we should be doing in health care, same thing in tax reform. Yeah. This one seems more flawed than your average bill, though, if we if as we are now learning, youre on board for reviewing it. You, of course, served on a Senate Armed Services committee, you heard barbara starrs reporting on the latest on the niger ambush that left four american Service Members dead. The pentagon is investigating doing a full review, should congress be investigating . I think congress will have a report. Any time you have the loss of life, any time youre involved in an incident in which we lose young men, lose young women, congress has an interest in seeing what happened, why, where, were they in the right place, something we should have done differently, was there something that has to be addressed within the system itself. But you know, we still have to go back down to one thing which is very important that is to express to those families who have now lost a loved one and our thoughts, our prayers, our support, take care of those individuals first, get the data, come back in, make changes. There is any time you have a war, any time you are in a war zone, any time you have young men and women at risk you have the possibility of loss of life. You dont want to see it. You want to avoid it. If we can learn from this, then we should be doing that. Senator, of course four americans were also killed in the benghazi attack in 2012 and that we well know led to massive years long investigations by congress. Seven congressional investigations, in fact. Is this not worthy of one as well . Its not to say its not worthy. Its simply a matter of, in the last one, in the benghazi incident your had a case of where there was clear testimony, information coming out, saying there were hours and hours of activity going on. We dont have the facts on this yet. If similar facts were to be determined in this particular case, you may very well see the same type of a demand for a review. But in any case, any time, regardless of when these types of losses occur, you want to get to the bottom of it and you want to do a reasonable plan to make sure it doesnt happen again and find out what happened in this particular case, but you do it in a reasonable fashion in which you try to learn from the incident. Find out what happened. Once again, you never take any loss of life as anything other than the most serious of nature and once again, you offer complete condolences. I share with you, look, i was governor of south dakota for eight years. We lost i went to 31 funerals for young men and women who lost lives overseas. You dont forget them. Every leader feels that. And when you go in, you cant take away the pain that families feel. You can offer your support, your prayers, you bring a community together, and you try to begin a healing process. Sometimes that takes a long, long time. But, i think thats one thing that element, that human element, is something none of us should ever forget. Absolutely not. And with that in mind, what did you think when President Trump said yesterday that past president s, including president obama, didnt make contact as youre just discussing with families of Fallen Soldiers, what did you make of his remark . I listened to his remarks and i can tell you that thats not quite what he said, not what i heard. What i heard him say, he may or may not have made them and then he may or may not have mader. Al contact, may have done them by letters and so forth. I can tell you that i believe that every single president , feels these, just as every governor feels the loss in their home state. Regardless of whether youre a republican or democrat, if youre the president of the United States, you feel that loss. And i think President Trump felt that loss and sometimes leaders have a challenge that theyre not exactly sure theyre human. Theyre not exactly sure what they should do. They want to play a part. They want to be in that role. But they also want to they also know that sometimes they got to learn how to do it as well. None of us come built in knowing how to respond in times of need. We have to learn from it and get better with time. I fault neither republican nor democrat leaders. I dont wish that upon any leader. Once again this is a case of where our entire country feels the hurt but they want that leader to step forward and to express on their behalf and sometimes as leaders were not sure that we do the greatest job in the world. That makes it more difficult to step in and do it. But we want to do that job for the American People and for those families. And thats a challenge sometimes. Yeah. Really quickly, on health care, an impossible turp after the important conversation weve had but also an important issue youre very much involved with on the hill. The president yesterday, he said on the Health Subsidies he canceled, he said he called it a gift to the insurance companies. Hes called it a payoff. He says, its a disgrace. Do you see those subsidies as a payoff . I think it was not the intent to begin with. But i think the president first of all he made the right choice to deliver it back to congress and say, if you want these to continue, then do them legally. Because we didnt have the legal authorization, the courts have indicated that to the president , its in our court, thats where it should be. But i feel like thats not exactly what he said. He said i canceled them because theyre disgrace. He calls them a gift to the Insurance Company. Why is he then asking you guys to fund that gift and payoff to the bad guy here which he thinks is the Insurance Company . Weve proposed and what weve been working on for several months is legislation that would prohibit what the president referred to double dipping. One in which they may well receive the payments but the benefit doesnt go back to the people who its supposed to help. Within the language that were talking about right now, we are proposing that these resources go back to individuals that need them. Individuals under 250 of poverty, but in exchange for that, that we actually make the first major changes in the Affordable Care act allowing under section 1332 additional opportunities for the state to actually reduce premiums for their people. And theres a number of different tools that are out there. Theyve just been made very difficult in the past. Were trying to ease up on them and allow more flexibility for those states. I think were getting there. And weve got legislation that is being fine tuned right now by patty murray and lamar alexander. Thats the important part i want to yeah. Thats where i want to leave this. You are a republican member of a Bipartisan Group working hard to find a solution here and that should not be lost in the conversation. Thank you so much for coming in. I appreciate it. You bet. Thank you. We are following breaking news we need to get to. Breaking news on wall street. Dow jones industrial average has hit a record high, passing the 23,000 mark for the first time just a short time ago. Cnns Business Correspondent maggie lake with much more on this. Maggie, another alltime high . Thats right. Another one for the history books. You know whats amazing there was barely a peep down here. We are getting used to this. The market up 4,600 points since the election. 25 . Weve gone right through 20, 21, 22,000. Just another day at work. Good earnings from Goldman Sachs and morgan stanley. A strong bull run. Underpinned by the good corporate profits. Improving global economy. Very good news if youre in the stock market. Not every american is. But if you are its helping your retirement. All right. Important to mark this another historic day. Maggie, thank you so much. Coming up for us, the pushback growing against the president over the federal response to the hurricane ravaged puerto rico. Im going to talk to a senator who returned from the island and says more people are going to die if more is not done and done fast. Plus this, it could be one of the biggest blows to isis yet. U. S. Backed forces in syria liberated the de facto isis capital of raqqah. We will take you live to the syrian border. Ill have the langoustine lobster ravioli. For you, sir . The original call was for langoustine ravioli. A langoustine is a tiny kind of lobster. A slight shellfish allergy rules that out, plus my wife ordered the langoustine. I will have chicken tenders and tater tots. If youre a ref, you way overexplain things. Its what you do. If you want to save fifteen percent or more on Car Insurance you switch to geico. Sir, we dont have tater tots. Its what you do. I will have nachos how much money do you think youll need in retirement . Then we found out how many years that money would last them. How long do you think well keep oooooohhh you stopped youre gonna leave me back here at year 9 . How did this happen . It turned out, a lot of people fell short, of even the average length of retirement. We have to think about not when we expect to live to, but when we could live to. Lets plan for income that lasts all our years in retirement. Prudential. Bring your challenges. Our recent online sales success seems a little. Strange . Nk na. Ever since we switched to fedex ground business has been great. Theyre affordable and fast. Maybe too affordable and fast. What if. People arent buying these books online, but they are buying them to protect their secrets . . hi bill. If that is your real name. Its william actually. Hmph affordable, fast fedex ground. Tmobiles unlimited now includes netflix on us. Thats right. Netflix on us. Get 4 unlimited lines for just 40 bucks each. Taxes and fees included. And now netflix included. So go ahead. Binge on us. Another reason why tmobile is americas best unlimited network. Hungry eyes one look at you and i cant disguise ive got hungry eyes applebees 2 for 20. Now thats eatin good in the neighborhood. Applebees 2 for 20. You wof your daily routine, so why treat your mouth any differently . Complete the job with listerine® help prevent plaque, early gum disease, bad breath and kill up to 99. 9 of germs. Listerine® bring out the bold™ our fellow maerps are dying and they desperately need our help. And ladies and gentlemen of the senate, i have seen it with my own eyes.