Republicans float the idea of a phasedin Corporate Tax cut. And the head of fema testifies on the hurricane response as the fbi is reportedly looking into how teeny tiny White Fish Energy secured that now canceled 300 Million Contract in puerto rico. We begin on this holiday morning with President Trump and his administration trying to get back on track after mondays indictments. Despite the fact that two former Campaign Officials are now under house arrest and a third is cooperating with the feds. The word from the white house is that it is business as usual. Are we buying it . Lets foond out. I have a great team here. Starting with nbcs peter a lexen der live at the white house. Peter, take us inside. Lets go behind those closed doors. What is the conversation among the president and his top officialings . Sarah Huckabee Sanders can say look away, all she wants. You and i know thats not the case. The bottom line is were having the veil pulled back by the chief of staff john kelly in a new interview with fox news overnight describing the president in terms of this russia investigation as being very distracted. He said of course he would be very distracted if he were being investigated for something. He says russia is a topic they have multiple conversations about each day. Generally in the morning before they get to the business of the day. We are hearing from the president himself on twert thit this morning. Some of his tweets during the course of the day. He writes, the fake news is working overtime as Paul Manaforts lawyer said, there was no collusion and events mentioned took place long before he came to the campaign. Few people knew the young low level volunteer named george who has already proven to be a dili, check the dems. It was President Trump himself who in march of last year was amok those who certainly knew George Papadopoulos, that volunteer low Level CampaignForeign Policy adviser as he describes it. The president at the time praising him as an excellent guy. The president also today theres the picture from actually that month. You see Jeff Sessions was in the room then. The senator who was advising the president , the senator from alabama, now attorney general, the president there as well, a long side papadopoulos. Tweeting where his priorities will be Going Forward in advance of this asia trip. Saying, i hope people will focus on our massive tax cuts for business jobs and the middle class in addition to democrat corruption. Weve been hearing reports. First by the washington post. That the president was seething. That he was fuming. Exasperated. Filled with angst and anger. As he watched the indictment coverage play out yesterday on television. His attorney here at the white house, ty cobb, responding to those reports, gave nbc news the following statement. He says, throughout the day the president spoke to his attorneys multiple times in response to press inquiries and questions about the process but never revealed any angst or anger. The president was focused on diplomatic preparations ahead of his trip to asia. He wanted the country to understand hes fully committed to continuing his course with the special counsel which is one of full cooperation. So thats just a sort of simple look at where the president stands right now. Its no surprise hed be watching tv and fuming certainly on the issue of russia. It was striking that the chief of staff was so open about the fact that its been very distracting to the president and its something they talk about each morning multiple times, stephanie. President trump, you said it, in his tweet, called George Papadopoulos a liar. He lied to the fbi. Thats how they got him to cooperate. I want to get my panel in here. Nbc National Political reporter john van allen, nbc legal analyst danny cevvalos. Brendan gary lee, contributor to the columnist. Weve got a full house because this is a big day. John, lets start with you. Even if the president is not in immediate legal jeopardy, you write, just as weve heard, this could end up being a big distraction. How big . What are you watching for . It certainly could actually become the major focus of all the questions not only for the white house but for members of his party. I think theres an intense effort by republicans on capitol hill right now to try to get a tax reform package done before this all spills into next year. I think after Robert Muellers revelations yesterday, everybody expects him to do more. This wasnt a oneoff. This look, like the beginning of a long process. So the president s going to talk about being focused on issues. His white house staff is going to talk about that. Ultimately, this president is distracted even when Robert Mueller isnt indicting his former aides or announcing the convictions of a former aide. This is going to be a struggle for the president and a test of his ability to be disciplined Going Forward. All right, brendan greely, the manafort and gates indictment does not mention the president , or his campaign. The papadopoulos plea agreement does, among other things, say he was contacted by a Russian National because he was part of the trump campaign. He was offered dirt on hillary clinton. He spent months trying to set up a meeting. So what . If that meeting didnt happen, what does that mean to this administration . I mean, i think, for me, most important thing for the administration right now is how will Congress Continues to be to be willfully ignorant about everything that theyre reading. My favorite quote of the day questioned was paul ryan, saying you want me to comment on that . I didnt read it. I cant comment how could he not read it . What else could paul ryan be doing yesterday thats more paramount than this . One of the things you learn as a reporter is the different creative ways people tell you i dont wish to comment on this. It is becoming increasingly clear that paul ryan will do will forgive almost anything to get this tax cut package passed. Aside from the logic of the tax cuts, at what price are we going to move this forward . Lets be honest if he doesnt get this tax policy through, then what, hes just proven to stand up for a president over and over without doing his homework . I mean, look, for him, thats all thats all paul ryan, republican, cares about, not the but did paul ryan not exist before donald trump did . Is he not worried about his legacy . I think paul ryan thinks the only legacy hell have is a tax reform. Hes a particular kind of conservative. I want to point something out which seems to be missed. Which is if President Trump is genuinely innocent of all the charges, if this is the utter nothing burger. If im accusing you of genocide of penguins in antarctica, right, most people will laugh that off. In fact, it plays into the president might play into the president s hands or id show my hand is going to uncover nothing. Or you show your hand. Why is the president so nervous . Why is his tells, like in poker, always so obvious . He says things like, im, like, a smart guy, you know . When he when theres potentially something to hide, hes going to deny and hes going to fulminate. The real question here is not about manafort, its about papadopoulos. How did he appear as a Foreign Campaign senior spoil advispoli out of nowhere . It was amazing, like me being on my High School Student council makes me qualified to be part of the administration. I want to share what he said to colleagues on the today show this morning. George was never a person who was part of a team who was interacting with Senior Management on a regular basis. I dont recall having much interaction with him throughout the campaign. He would have potentially been talking to somebody else on the campaign. As the campaign manager, when we were in the middle of an intense primary fight with cruz and kasich, you know, my day to day operation was not interacting with a low level volunteer. Okay, we keep hearing hes a low level guy. Corey lewandowski, you may not remember emailing back and forth, but if you did, i have a feeling mueller has a record of it and hell share that with you. What do you make of this corey lewandowski, he was junior, dont know him, george who. We kind of got the same message from sarah Huckabee Sanders. The president too, if somebody in his orbit gets in trouble, hes never heard of him. Mention ee eed papadopoulos on twitter today. This is like you and one of your producers. Its difficult to plead. I dont know if lewandowski was close to papadopoulos. They do very different things. Obviously from the plea agreement that papadopoulos signed, he was communicating with higher level people on the campaign. These guys know who he was. Pictures of him at the table with trump. It will be difficult to convince the American Public this person has absolutely nothing to do with the campaign. The idea of a volunteer, that just means that somebody who didnt need to be paid. Sort of like john kelly last night. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said you should never question a four star general. John kelly said on another network last night that Paul Manafort barely knew the president. Paul manafort has known President Trump for years. He has an apartment in trump tower. He could go up and borrow a cup of sugar. So that is just untrue. He probably doesnt. Danny, wasnt to ask you our legal eagle here, we learned mueller initially wanted the plea agreement for papadopoulos to stay sealed because he was acting, a procooperator. I dont even know what that means. Proactive cooperation is making things happen for the prosecution in the here and now. It can be wearing a wire. It can be setting up meetings. Monitoring emails. Text messages. Things like that. It depends on the context. But its critically important to keep that information secret because obviously if you know your coconspirators indicted, youre not going to meet him for lunch. So that is why a prosecutor will try and keep things sealed, keep things secret, as long as they can, because it only assists their investigation. That way, they get their cooperators in line and they can pro actively go out and create evidence. Instead of just find it. Credit to them. Nobody heard of this guy, george, basically from our side of the table until yesterday. They do mueller does run somewhat of a tight ship. If republicans continued to ignore this noise, what could the consequences for them be, truly . I hate to say this, but if they continue to ignore the noise and if the president pardons manafort, papadopoulos and everywhere else, this is going to go away for him. What we learn from President Trump is he believes truth is what you can get away with. Truth is what you can get away with . To donald trump, truth is what you can get away with and what hes learning and hearing from people like paul ryan and others is we will let you get away with it because we want this to go away so we can get tax reform. I agree with brendan. One of the things that made my head explode over the course of the campaign. Thats a bad look. Exactly. Digging into the numbers about tax reform and shadow banking. Every once in a while, he would tell this whopper of a lie. All of us in the newsroom would go, thats not true. Were going to figure out if its not true. Wed go, its not true, we got him. Then it would not matter at all. You would see schwartzman, a titan of industry, sit next to President Trump in the white house as the president would spout lies about the economy. It doesnt matter. I remember interviews with Senior Campaign advisers about economics during the campaign. I remember being on the phone thinking, you guys are just make things up. And it didnt matter. I believe brendan is referring to an act known as the full ma nunchen. Acording to political, muellers team said that papadopoulos plea was only a small part of a largerscale investigation. Yet sarah Huckabee Sanders repeat lid was saying at the podium yesterday this thing is coming to a close, its almost over. Thats not likely. Just based open the fact that we know or its pretty obvious papadopoulos is going to be cooperate, thats why the investigation was kept secret. Also were probably going to see my prediction is were going to see manafort and gates possibly come to the table about an agreement. The sentencing potential for their charges, particularly the Money Laundering conspiracy, is so high, its going to be close to the statutory maximum of 20 years. The only thing that can drag that down to a reasonable level is substantial assistance with the government. So they have a tremendous incentive to come forward and cooperate and that means giving other people up, up the chain of command. Ideally, the biggest fish they can think of. Okay, john, dannys talking about what could drag down manaforts sentence. Lets talk about who this could be dragging in. And how about wilbert ross . Are we going to hear his name . He owns a big stake of the bank of cypress. The bank of cyprus, where we know at this point, according to the document, where some of this money was laundered through. That board had five russians that yes, wilbert ross was helpful in pushing them often the board, but wilbert ross also sat on the board of this bank while they sold one of their units to Russians Associated directly with the kremlin. I think close observers of this case and obviously stephanie youre one of them will be surprised if Robert Mueller is not looking at the relationship between will better ross and that bank and the relationship between wilber ross and Paul Manafort. Weve already seen hes going towards Financial Transactions with this indictment yesterday. That basically alleges a scheme to launder money and hide profits from ukrainian politicians from the u. S. Government. I think those Financial Transactions are something theyll be looked at. In terms of sessions, obviously, will have to recuse himself from this particular case because of his role in the campaign. It would also be surprising if the special counsel didnt look in that direction too. The only thing i want to see is Paul Manaforts 800 grand of mens wear and his 655,000 lawn mowing bill. That must be some nice piece of property. Were going to take a break. A lot more to cover coming up as nbc news was first to report last night facebook now claims, listen to this, 126 million americans, or as they like to call them, their community, saw russianbacked content on their feeds in 2016. Its no doubt going to be a talker in todays series of congressional hearings with social media giants facebook, google and twitter. Were going to go live to the hill next. Ive always wanted to create those experiences for others. With my advisors help along the way, its finally my turn to be the host. When you have the right financial advisor, life can be brilliant. Ameriprise i knew at that exact moment, whatever it takes, wherever i have to go. Im beating this. My main focus was to find a team of doctors that work together. 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Liberty mutual insurance. Welcome back. In just a few hours, representatives from facebook, google and twitter will all answer questions as part of the first of three separate hearings on capitol hill. The focus, how russia used social media to interfere in last years president ial election. Nbcs jolene kent is following from capitol hill. Jo, even before hearings began, you have startling new numbers about how widespread i mean, a third of americans saw content on social Media Outlets that was brought to us by russia . Stef, thats absolutely right, its 126 million americans. That may have actually been exposed to russianbacked content. This is coming from information weve obtained about facebooks testimony that will be delivered later today. 80,000 posts were generated by about 120 fake russiabacked pages. Whats interesting about this particular number, it started by only being exposed to 29 million americans but thanks to likes and shares and follows, this ended up becoming 126 million americans on facebook. Thats about half of the american electorate. Thats eligible to vote. Twitter of course also, telling us they are preparing to Tell Congress their own massive numbers. Were talking about 37,000 russialinked accounts that were tweeting 1. 4 million time