happening now, breaking news, we re following chaos at the u.s. capitol. republicans huddling behind closed doors tonight after kevin mccarthy s bid for the speaker s gavel lands with a thud for the second straight day. the next moves for mack arthy and his to popponents are very unclear right now. new information emerging about the terrifying on-field collapse of damar hamlin. the buffalo bills say hamlin is showing signs of improvement although he remains in critical condition in the icu. this hour, the chief medical officer for the nfl joins me live for an exclusive interview. welcome. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. announcer: this is cnn breaking news. let s get straight to the spectacle on the floor of the u.s. house of representatives now adjourned until 8:00 p.m. eastern. manu is standing by for us. republicans there working behind the scenes right now to try to resolve this deadlock. i understand you re getting new information. reporter: yeah.
no path to becoming speaker of the house because a bunch of conservative members of the republican conference have dug in against him. what has changed this morning? why should today be any different after the three failed votes yesterday? a couple things mccarthy is doing like send his allies fanning out across the conference, trying to get some members voting present instead of no. we ll talk about that in a second. keep in mind, the numbers here. mccarthy can only atord four defectors to become speaker. if everybody votes for a earn. he started with 19 tuesday. he finished off with 20. steve kornacki is going to join us to break down the math and tell us what to expect. another thing that s new today, former president trump getting off the fence to push fellow republicans to, i m quoting here, vote for kevin. close the deal. how much will that matter? we ll get into it because right now it is parls in the building behind me. nobody in charge. no end in sight. no work getti
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Many months later, thats after the inauguration, after the election, when fbi director james comey went down to the hill, where he was testifying and said, yes, there was an open probe. By that time, the fbi had also initiated a separate but related investigation and that has now been broken much into public view, much more, because the break came with this very curious indictment of a woman named maria butina. Now, she was suspected as an unregistered agent of the russian government. That she was trying to mount this covert influence operation through a conservative group, a Gun Rights Group in the u. S. Tonight, the same reporter who had the Breakthrough Scoop about the Steele Dossier has a new and obviously provocative question. Did alleged russian spy, maria butina, cause a Leadership Shake up at the nra . The backstory here is an fbi dive, prior to the fact of trump becoming president , into russian attempts to inf
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. By the letters, chs. Confidential human source. Now, the trove of documents detail reports of payments to steele, mostly redacted. You can see there, thats a lot of white space. There are two exceptions. The final page is information from a document, from february 2016. Of course, thats long before the russia probe began. It says steele was, quote, verbally admonished by the fbi and that steele acknowledged the admonishment and even signed a document noting it. Now, from this excerpt, which obviously is tantalizing, we dont have the wider context of why. The other item comes from page two of these new documents. It concerns the fbis decision to terminate its relationship with steele. Guess when . Just days before the 2016 election. Now, this document says steele had confirmed his relationship with the fbi to an outside party. And that he was a source for a, quote, online article. In addition to revealing his relationshi
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. They are known as the steele dossier. They allege, among other things, that the Trump Campaign had organized collusion with the kremlin. Quote, this is something of huge significance. Way above party politics, that Intelligence Officer told corn, that would be steele. Quote, i think trumps own party should be aware of this stuff, as well. The official confirmation of the fbi investigation into the Trump Campaigns contacts with russia was not confirmed for many more months. Its even easy to forget that, because its the kind of big information thats the center of American Politics, so we all talk about it. People who dont even follow the news know about it. But lets be clear. It was not until march 2017, many months later is, thats after the inauguration, after the election, when fbi director james comey went down to the hill, where he was testifying and said, yes, there was an open probe. By that time, the fbi had also i