Pr prizbillus, senior political reporter at usa today. Chris, yesterday sean spicer said he did not believe anyone in the campaign or transition knew Michael Flynn had this history of lobbying for a Foreign Government, specifically for turkey. Today he struggled to explain exactly what happened. Give us what the white house is saying this hour about what they knew and didnt know. Reporter theyre trying to switch the focus. Theyre trying to put the focus on the fact it was just a couple days ago that general flynn actually filed to say that he was essentially an agent of a Foreign Government that really wasnt the repeated question asked of him. Look, you have a situation where someone during the campaign and during the transition is actually advising the president while hes being paid by a Foreign Government. Exactly the thing the president said was wrong with washington. He was going to come in and drain the swamp. He also seemed to abdicate any responsibility that there was in a vetting process. You have a situation where they say the president didnt know about it. But there are reports out there, a letter that went out. Lets listen to what the explanation was from sean spicer a short while ago. It is not up to nor appropriate nor is it legal for the government to start going into private citizens, seeking advice about what they have to register or not. That would be the equivalent of walking through someones Tax Deductions saying this is a Tax Deduction you should take. Thats why they say you should take professional advice, expertise, whatever it is. That is not up to them to determine, plain and simple. Reporter what he said repeatedly is that we trust people to fill out the appropriate forms. And he said i believe everyone has done what is legally required. Peter alexander asked about this, how can you be sure, he asked, other people in this administration now, who are, indeed, advising the president arent doing what he did if its up to them to report it. We didnt get a clearance to that question. Heidi, the bottom line is, hes already out, right . Michael flynn is long gone at this point. Does it matter if they knew this or didnt know this . It absolutely matters. Let me bring you in on something. I was doing work on the emoluments clause and quid pro quo stuff going on. I dont know if thats has been pointed out. After flynns oped, the turkish media, which is essentially an extension of the turkish government, stopped calling to take Donald Trumps name off trump tower there. Turkey is where trump has some of his most lucrative overseas businesses. It raises all kinds of questions about the intent as well. Just at a minimum, the blatant disregard for draining the swamp. As chris said, even if they didnt know about the paperwork, the information was out the, the knowledge of flynns ties not only to russia but to turkey and that oped itself should have raised red flags itself where he is ingrash ating himself to take heat off trump for a government thats been red flagged as having problematic democracy stances. Kelly, lets ask about the Health Care Plan. The president had a group of white House Republicans over this afternoon. Hes lobbying hard. Is the house the problem or more the senate thats going to be the holdup . Reporter it depends on which piece of the Health Care Plan youre talking about. In the first phase they have the ability on the senate side to pass that with just republican votes. Because of the particular way its being presented. That is not the immediate concern. Part three of the plan would require democratic votes. Thats where the senate comes into play because you cant get it through without the 60 votes. They dont have that many. That will be another chapter down the line. On the house side, where all the action is happening right now, conservatives are concerned about not having everything theyre looking for in this bill. Speaker ryan gave a town hall presentation about yesterday, the nuts and boats and why he says it has to be this bill and not a changed bill going forward. There are lots of deep procedural reasons for that i wont bore you with at the moment. There is not just a sense of the president saying, i want to negotiate, which is part of his style and certainly the listening sessionings, facetoface persuasion, but paul ryan and Mitch Mcconnell have to work within very specific rules that are not the same as a typical piece of legislation because theyre trying to get this through, to blunt democratic opposition. The president is saying hes willing to listen on different issues and at the same time we heard sean spicer say on one thing thats come up, when would the medicaid piece be phased out based on the current obamacare framework. The president is saying that he might be willing to talk about changes to that but the president says he accepts the dates currently in this legislation, in part, because members of the White House Team were a part of drafting the legislation. Although its just popped up in recent days in specific texts, paul ryan, his team, the committees that have reonsibility, have been working on this for some time. There will be hurdles and speed bumps on capitol hill but it seems more heat is happening on the house side. I want to jump back to another subject. That is Rex Tillerson having lunch today with the president at the white house. Notable because yesterday the foreign minister of mexico happened to be in washington. The state Department Spokesman didnt seem to know he was there, even though he met with jared kushner. So, i guess the question is, is the state department being a little sidelined right now . Reporter they said pretty clearly they didnt even know he was there. There are all these concerns by people on the hill, by people who know how washington has to function, that Rex Tillerson is being marginalized, the entire state department is being marginalized. In fact, we know there are so many positions over there that are left unfilled. Then you add onto this, this was also talked about at the press briefing, that typically when especially on the first foreign trip, which is so significant, obviously, for a secretary of state, but consider where hes going, kate. Hes going to south korea, hes going to japan, china, countries are significant implications for the economy as well as for national security, always pretty much in history, recent history for sure. You would have the press corps traveling with the secretary of state. This is something that the American People have a significant reason to know about. Yet theye not traveling on the plane. There was some question about whether they would be able to go at all after a lot of pushback. Now theyre able to travel commercially. Theres some complication with any single reporter getting to these three places commercially and actually being able to follow the secretary of state. You heard the explanation by sean spicer. The secretary wanted to save money. Its not even clear going in a small plane will save money, as you well know, kate, as someone th networks pay and often pay very dearly for the ability to travel either with the president , the secretary of sta state, so it doesnt ring true, or at least were not getting a complete answer, it doesnt seem, about why this isnt being made available to a free and open press. Yeah, those arent free rides we get on fair force one or when youre following the secretary of state. By the way, andrea mitchell, i would bet money shes going to get there somehow. Reporter i just spoke with her producer. Andrea mitchell is not going to be kept from an important story. Kelly, let me go back to you. Top member on the Democratic Intelligence Committee went back to cia headquarters today. Whats that all about . Reporter mark warner, the ranking member, meaning hes sort of theco cha cochair of s Intelligence Committee visited langley for the third time. People on the Intelligence Committee, youre talking leadership on that committee, often theyre able to get briefings on capitol hill in some secure areas. He went to langley, cia headquarters and that suggests a couple of things. It raises the stakes of what he wasinquiring about. Was it something even more secret than could comfortably discussed on capitol hill . Going there and were talking about it it brings up the questions about what is he looking to find . Is he getting the answers he wants as part of that committee . I think its helpful to point out that for the Intelligence Committees, the democrats and republicans work very closely together. There isnt quite the same rivalry or kind of imbalance of power you might find on other committees. Its notable he made the trip to cia headquarters again. Heidi, day 50 of the trump administration. I want to show you some numbers. I thought this was really interesting, before we ask this next question. This is our political unit today put together statistics about President Trumps social media presence. The president has tweeted 260 times in his first 50 days in office. That is 36 tweets a week. In those 260 tweets there were 157 exclamation points. A lot of those come in the morning, particularly during the morning news shows to get really specific here, keep a look at at 8 22 a. M. , because that is sort of the average time when the president tends to send a morning tweet. Heres where it gets interesting. President trump has two phones, an iphone his staff reportedly uses and the Android Phone he used during the 2016 campaign. On the iphone here are some of the most used words and phrases. Jobs, facebook, women, americans. Now look at the word cloud. Well put it up for the words and phrases used on android. Fake news, news media, failing, New York Times, our country, democrats, the election and so on. Heidi, the white house says this is how he connects, social media, but the tweets keep things in the news the white house rather we not keep talking about. The most interesting part of that i found is the connection that was made between his dips in the daily gallup poll tracking in terms ofaily approval and the more bombastic tweets he sent out which were, by the way, false, which may be hurting him, which shows something that was considered a beneficial Campaign Tactic may not necessarily be translating very well when it comes to governing. Why is that . Cause some of the tweets that have gotten him in trouble, according to the gallup ratings, have been flat out false. The number that voted in the election, the gitmo he assigned to president obama when it was president bush. A lot of false things being put out. Its also showing in the polls, while donald trump still has a lot of support from his base and a lot of support when it comes to his economic prescriptions, there is a lot of concern among those same voters about his temperament. You can draw a direct line to thins happening on twitter. His most recent tweet about the wiretapping takes that on steroids because here he is accusing the former president of a felo that is something that is going to continue to hnt him. Its something that happened, yes, on twitter. Yeah, on twitter. Heidi, thanks so much. You can check out, by the way, all that tweet information, all that stuff i was just telling you, msnbc. Com has got the writeup. Chris jansing, kelly odonnell, heidi, thank you all so much. Appreciate it. For more on the congressional fight over the new republican Health Care Plan, i want to bring in republican congressman bill flores. Nice to see you on a friday afternoon. How are you . Good to see you. Doing well. Lets talk about the status of this bill right now. Earlier today the president held a meeting with the chairman of each committee on the house side that has jurisdiction over this bill. The president clearly trying to rally support for this legislation. You support this legislation. What are you saying to your colleagues who dont, because theres quite a few of them . Eve beenrying to make sure our colleagues understand whats in the bill. Its a pretty quick read. Its barely over 120 pages. We did extensive markups this week, the ways and means markup took 18 hours, the markup i was in took 27. We had ample time to go through and offer amendments and so foefrt. Its mainly making sure Everybody Knows whats in the bill and whats not in the bill. Some of your Freedom Caucus members know whats in it and they dont like it. Think it doesnt go far enough in removing what obamacare did. It goes as far as we can. Kelly was on a few minutes ago and she did a great job explaining how we intend to go through this in three phases. Phase one uses a budget tool called reconciliation. We need 51 votes in the senate. The challenge with reconciliation is we cant do everything we want on the repeal side or replace side. We get the rest in phase two, which is what tom price could do as secretary of hhs. Phase three is where we hopefully get democratic support, remove antitrust protections Insurance Companies have. Those should be bipartisan. Then well get into some that are a little tougher. Well try those in phase three. If we can get people to look at it as a whole package, we should get everyone on board. Everything you mentioned is capitol hill stuff. Reckonciliation is reconciling between house and senate and making sure the language is the same. What about the American People, do you think the president needs to get out there and sell this to your constituents down in texas . I think it would be helpful. But a couple things need to happen first, quite honestly. Were running into a calendar issue. We had to mark these bill up, even though we didnt have a Congressional Office or cbo score. Then well have a bunch of governors to support this. They wanted to wait and see the cbo score as well. We had to mark it up without knowing the results. I am a cpa so i have a good feel but we need to wait for that. Once those things are done, once we get the cbo score and governors come out and support it, then President Trump needs to go on the road and help everybody get comfortable before we vote on this during the in a couple weeks from now in the house. You mentioned the markup, which is where you sit with house energy and Commerce Committee and have discussion about the bill. I want to play an exchange from democrat you know where im going mike doyle of pennsylvania is talking to john shimkus of illinois. He asks what part of the existing obamacare his colleague let me say that again. What he was asking is what part of obamacare is a mandate. Take a listen. Im curious, what is it were mandating will the gentleman yield . Yes. What about men purchasing prenatal care . Is that not correct . Chree laming mile time. Should we . Reclaiming my time. Theres such thing as ala cart insurance. Thats the point. We want the consumer to go to the Insurance Market and be able to negotiate on a plan you tell me where do you fall on that . Do you agree with congressman shimkus . Absolutely i agree with congressman shimkus. If you think about what obamacare did. It says, heres one size fits all insurance. You have to buy it. The premiums have skyrocketed. We have 70 of the counties in texas now that only have one carrier. If that carrier drops out. Insurance markets, those people are hosed. Theyve got nowhere to go because they have to buy that expensive one size fits all package. But hes saying that men shouldnt have to pay for women to have maternal care, right . He should men should have their own plans and women should have their own plans, is that fair . I think its fair. Our Health Care Needs are separate. Let me be explicitly clear about this. Were not saying we should allow Insurance Companies to charge more for a similarly situated female than a sirly situated male. If youre a 43yearold male you should be paying the same thing as a 43yearold male, or vice versa. This is my question. If its al a cart, if im a young women and i dont pick maternal care and i get pregnant and i wasnt expecting it and i dont have that coverage, how does it work if you pick the wrong plan . What we hope to do is be able to give you an option where you can buy the enhanced plan. You would have to pay a surcharge for that because you got in after the pregnancy occurred, so we could do that. The other thing we could offer is maybe depending on the income level, they could possibly get onto Medicaid Expansion in the first couple of years. After that they cant. There could be some options. What if you dont have coverage for something catastrophic for Something Like cancer and then you get cancer . On that case, what you can do well have a situation where you can buy preexisting coverage excuse me, coverage for preexisting conditions. Thats what im talking about. People who dont have it and then get it. Im trying to anticipate what would happen if you had an emergency and you didnt have the right kind of ala cart coverage. We dont want a wild, wild west when it comes to coverage. Well turn if to the states and theyll come up with different options for people because this is more agerelated in terms of saying, im going to buy a policy that doesnt have cancer coverage, im going to buy a policy that doesnt cover to tonsil electrici tonsilectomies. If youre in a certain age group, 40 to 60. Can i ask you about a congressional budget office. Republicans keep pointingut the cbo score was not accurate on obamacare. Heres some of what sean spicer had to say about it this week. The cbo score is about to come out next week and you just called into question their credibility. I didnt just so their clear, their record is what im calling into question. When you look at the nu