and i didn't get fired today. if you didn't get fired today, you had a better day than reince priebus. >> reince is doing a fantastic job at the white house. and i believe he has the president's confidence. >> reince is a good man. john kelly will do a fantastic job. >> that war of priebus and anth scaramucci ending very well for mr. scaramucci. >> i'm beginning to believe that scaramucci was brought in for a purpose, and that was to humiliate reince. >> he was called "reincy" by the president as if he was a pet and not the chief of staff. >> the president has confidence in general kelly. he has to have a person around him that he has confidence in. >> at no turn has this white house demonstrated functionality. i don't think introducing one competent person is going to change that. >> they should have approved health care last night. you can't have everything.

boy, oh, boy. they have been working on that for seven years. can you believe this? >> the credit goes to a lot of people. at the top of the list are the three who showed amazing courage to resist the pressure and do what's good for the country. >> at the end of the worst week for the trump presidency, donald trump has a new white house chief of staff, which is the absolute proof that even he knows that it was the worst week for the trump presidency. firing a white house chief of staff and bringing in a new one is always the act of a presidency desperately out of control. reince priebus was fired faster than any previously fired white house chief of staff in history. he lasted 189 days. reince priebus' last week on the job began with his failure to prevent the president from attacking his own attorney general. white house chief of staff is supposed to control that. the white house chief of staff, reince priebus, also failed to organize a trump administration announcement that transgender people would be banned from

service in the military. the reason reince priebus failed to organize that administration announcement was because it was not an administration announcement. it was simply a tweet by an out of control president that the white house chief of staff is supposed to control. white house chief of staff reince priebus failed to control the text of a speech that the president delivered to the boy scouts of america. it is the only presidential speech in history that the boy scouts of america had to officially apologize for. the boy scouts of america had to apologize for subjecting the boy scouts to a speech by the president of the united states. the president, who the white house chief of staff is supposed to control. the white house chief of staff failed to control anthony scaramucci, who has been offered the job of director of communications in the white house and waged a public profane war with presidential adviser steve bannon and white house chief of staff reince priebus,

promising publicly that reince priebus would soon be fired. every single thing that happened to the trump white house this week was negative, and every one of those things should have been controllable by the white house chief of staff. then, then came the humiliating defeat of the trump/mcconnell repeal of obamacare in the senate last night, something the president had said he could do in a day. something the president said would be easy. it was the president's first major piece of legislation, and no one can remember the last time a president's first major piece of legislation was defeated by the congress. and so at the end of a week of humiliation and chaos in the white house, the president had had enough and decided the solution was to bring in former general john kelly, now the secretary of homeland security. but what everyone in washington knows is that if general kelly

had been the white house chief of staff every day this week, all those same things would have happened, and it would still be the worst week in the history of the trump presidency. and the best, most decisive victory for the resistance against the trump presidency, the resistance crushed the trump presidency on the senate floor. the congress now knows that they are not working with a functional presidency. donald trump was irrelevant to what happened on the senate floor. he had no capacity to influence the outcome. he tried to get republican senator lisa murkowski to vote his way, but everyone knows lisa murkowski now is much, much tougher than donald trump. in a "wall street journal" op-ed piece today, peggy noonan said, trump is, quote, weak and sniveling. she wrote half the president's tweets show utter weakness. they are shrill little cries usually just after dawn.

the historian joshua zeitz this week described the white house this way. it's a team of rivals but for morons. general kelly has never tried to manage a team of morons before. in "the washington post" today, eugene robinson captured the essence of the trump presidency, that general kelly will now be asked to manage. gene wrote, the court of mad king donald is not a presidency. it is an affliction, one that saps the life out of our democratic institutions, and it must be fiercely resisted if the nation as we know it is to survive. joining us now, peter wehner, he worked in the last three republican administrations and was a senior aide to president george w. bush. also with us, eugene robinson, pulitzer prize winning opinion writer for "the washington post" and an msnbc political analyst. joining us, chris whipple, the author of the gatekeepers, how

the white house chiefs of staff define every presidency. eugene, the presidency you described today so fully and eloquently in "the washington post" seems to be one that no white house chief of staff can control. >> well, not without the authority to control it. that's what reince priebus always lacked. he was never given anywhere near the authority that a chief of staff usually has. now, there was no organization chart. everybody just sort of reported directly to the president. he couldn't be a gatekeeper. he couldn't manage anything. you know, so whether or not he was talented at managing or knew politics or whatever really didn't matter. and so the question going forward is whether general kelly gets any more authority, actual, real authority, not to reorganize the white house, but to organize it since it's never been organized and to control the flow of information and

control the people into the oval office and act like a chief of staff. you know, my bets are that he probably won't get it, but we'll see. >> peter, am i being premature in betting everything i have that he won't get that authority in the white house? >> no, i'd lay that bet as well. look, we've seen donald trump enough to know that he's fundamentally uncontrollable and uncontainable, and it doesn't matter if james baker was chief of staff. the personnel at the white house is mediocre. there's no question about that. but the problem at its core is donald trump, and it is at its core that he is a person who thrives on chaos and manages with chaos. but it's really deeper than that, lawrence. it is a psychological and emotional affliction. he has a disoriented and disordered mind, and there is no controlling or containing that. what i'd also emphasize, we're 185 days in to this white house,

and this chaos is unlike anything we've ever seen, and they haven't faced a genuine crisis yet. can you imagine if you had a 9/11-type situation or a financial meltdown or a war, a military collision happen with this crew and with this commander in chief? that's the really frightening prospect. this is not going to change. it's his worst week, but it's not going to be the worst week of the trump presidency. there's no bottom with these guys. >> chris whipple, you have written a book about white house chiefs of staff. the job has grown over time. it used to be called appointment secretary. it was richard nixon, correct me if i'm wrong, who decided to militarize the title to chief of staff and thereby create this image around the job itself. and yet the job has become the image in so many ways with so many people who have had it. this white house, it seems to me, is going to require a new chapter in your book because

your book is how the chiefs of staff define every presidency. is it possible for any chief of staff to define this presidency in the way you've said others have? >> well, you know, as you pointed out, it really began with nixon and haldeman. hald heman became, famous usually, the lord high executioner. every president finds out sometimes the hard way that you cannot govern without empowering a white house chief of staff as first among equals to execute your agenda. and most importantly, to tell you things you do not want to hear. now, that's the big challenge obviously with donald trump. you know, with kelly, i think trump has a shot at a reset here. but it may be a long shot. generals have not done well. al hague lasted a little bit more than a month with gerry ford after nixon resigned. you can't just order people around or strap them up to lie detector tests to try to ferret out leakers.

it's a skill set that requires diplomacy, and there aren't a lot of jim bakers or leon panettas around. >> gene robinson, one reason why a general would struggle in this job is, number one, they are accustomed to having people have to obey them. when they speak, what they're giving are orders that must be obeyed in the chain of command. so that's their behavioral history going into it. the other is that the generals usually know what you could really classify within white house terms as nothing about politics. general kelly knows absolutely nothing about the contents or the politics of health care legislation, about the tax legislation that's going to be coming up, about the budget legislation. he knows nothing about it. and managing the politics within the white house has been a white house chief of staff's primary function. >> yeah. well, you're not getting that with kelly. you know, look, most of the

generals of that rank that i've met are sophisticated people, and they're not strangers at least to the hill in terms of national security matters at least. so he's got that. of course, you know, there's no shortage of generals in this administration who are experts on national security. the problem is that there's nobody who can control the administration's approach toward domestic policy. and certainly general kelly would not be expected to step into that role, at least not easily. i mean it would be a steep learning curve. but do we even get there? i mean is he even empowered to do anything or to try to do anything without the president undercutting him with an early-morning tweet? and that's what i just can't see past. >> in the white house that is being driven mad, apparently, by

leaks, it has flawlessly leaked tonight to "the washington post" this about the history of this job offer. trump first tried to offer the chief of staff job to kelly in mid-may. kelly told the president that he was flattered but declined, saying he still had more to accomplish beefing up national security and improving immigration enforcement. the president has tried to convince the general multiple times, and the general has politely declined several times. said one administration official who requested anonymity because he was leaking. so there it begins. he's been asking for months, and for some strange reason, general kelly got the answer right repeatedly and this week got the answer wrong. >> yeah. i think general kelly is going to look back and wish he had said no again. i feel for him. he's an honorable man. he's obviously a courageous man, and i think he's a competent man. but, again, he's in a situation that is impossible.

and one of the things that we have seen about donald trump is that he ends up humiliating and diminishing everybody around him. it doesn't matter. anybody within his orbit leaves that orbit a reduced human being. and i'm afraid it's going to happen to general kelly too. and by the way, i do think that republicans -- there is a kind of resignation now within the republican party. they've been in this delusional world thinking that at some point they would be able to keep donald trump on track. and i think that they've finally figured out much after they should have that that is an impossible task. and general kelly, no matter how impressive he is, isn't going to be able to do what's impossible. >> chris whipple, in your study of the history of this job, it has only grown increasingly complex over time because governing has grown increasingly complex, and the range of subjects that the white house chief of staff has to be fluent in have just exploded exponentially.

the person who probably had the widest command of all of that in my experience was leon panetta because he was on the budget committee in the house of representatives, which has jurisdiction over, in its way, almost everything. he had worked in the office of management and budget of the entire federal budget. so he had to look into every single thing the government was doing before he walked into that white house. and he was himself a politician elected to office in the congress. he had everything you need. is that kind of just, as a bio, is that what you're looking for and everything off of that is a compromise? >> and even more so, you're looking for somebody who is grounded like panetta or baker, who can walk into the oval office, close the door, and tell the president what he doesn't want to hear. that's critical. the other thing panetta had was haldeman-like authority. he had the power. this cannot work unless the chief of staff has authority as first among equals.

he has to be the gatekeeper. there's no way that the moocher can report directly to donald trump, or this will be -- this will fail. >> look, gene, i think we have a test for general kelly on day one, and that is exactly how many minutes does it take him to yank those white house credentials off the neck of anthony scaramucci because if scaramucci works in that white house, by definition general kelly has failed to control that white house. >> i actually believe that's true. certainly he can't report directly to the president. if scaramucci is around, he's going to push it. he's going to take liberties. even if on an organization chart he's below general kelly, he's going to try to get around him. he's going to have to be slapped down. and trump is going to have back kelly up in those instances. who knows if he will. i kind of think he probably won't. but there's an even bigger

problem named jared kushner, who is also in the white house, who is the president's son-in-law, who has this impossibly broad portfolio of domestic and foreign policy issues. and, oh, yes, and peace in the middle east and everything else that he's supposed to be doing. so will he now report through general kelly to president trump? he should. i doubt he will. >> peter wehner, is there another chief of staff in history who would have tolerated an anthony scaramucci in the white house for a day? >> boy, i thought that as well. i worked in the white house for seven years, three administrations. if anybody had done what scaramucci has done, they would have been fired within an hour. it's not only he wasn't fired. he was vindicated. he got the trophy on the wall. priebus is out. scaramucci is there. that kind of style, that kind of approach has been validated, and it's been validated by donald trump, which gets us back to the original point.

this is what is fundamentally the core problem with the trump white house is donald trump himself. and, boy, if scaramucci had done this in any other white house, he would been out on the curb in no time. >> can i add one other non-negotiable demand that kelly should make, and that is he can say, mr. president, you may tweet all you like, but i'm going to check them out in advance. >> yes. >> he should have control -- >> tweet approval. >> tweet approval should be a non-negotiable. >> every white house chief of staff has had a final say in any white house communication that's going out historically. it's not unusual. chris whipple, who has to add a chapter to his book, "the gatekeepers, how the white house chiefs of staff define every presidency" except one. you're going to do an adjustment on the title. eugene robinson, thank you for joining us. peter , stay with us. coming up, the profiles in courage. the real profiles in courage who

stopped the trump/mcconnell health care bill, taking health care coverage away from tens of millions of people. the real people who stopped that. that's coming up. you're not taking that. come with me. you're not taking that. you're not taking that. you're not taking that. mom, i'm taking the subaru. don't be late. even when we're not there to keep them safe, our subaru outback will be. (vo) love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. nit's softer than ever. new charmin ultra soft is softer than ever so it's harder to resist. okay, this is getting a little weird enjoy the go with charmin

or a little internet machine? [ phone ringing ] hi mom. it makes you wonder... shouldn't we get our phones and internet from the same company? that's why xfinity mobile comes with your internet. you get up to 5 lines of talk and text at no extra cost. [ laughing ] so all you pay for is data. see how much you can save. choose by the gig or unlimited. call or go to xfinitymobile.com introducing xfinity mobile. a new kind of network designed to save you money. do you need to take that call? >> no. >> okay. fine. >> it might be the president, so i do want to miss the call. [ laughter ] >> nice.

that was the next white house chief of staff, general john kelly, at the aspen security forum with nbc's pete williams last week. joining us now, charlie sykes, editor in chief of right wisconsin and an msnbc contributor, and joining us by phone, steve schmidt, republican strategist and an msnbc political analyst. i want to give you free rein to talk about this news, but let me tee this up. that is who i think may be the big turf winner in what's happened in the white house today, and that is vice president pence because we now have a white house chief of staff who does not know anything about the legislative process, does not know anything about the contents of tax legislation, about how to move a senator or a house member one way or another on budget bills, on any of this stuff. vice president pence now can step forward and say, leave all the legislating to me. in effect, leave all the governing to me, the domestic governance in this white house.

steve schmidt, might that be the biggest turf grab that we see? >> well, lawrence, i don't often disagree with you on these questions of process and analysis. but certainly i think it's the case that it's not possible that general kelly could be any more ignorant of these things than reince priebus was. he had no idea how to build coalitions, how to deal with congress, that you have the interior secretary illegally threatening the senior senator from the state of alaska, and across the board on all sorts of different issues. i mean to your last segment on the show, we're going to know very quickly whether general kelly will have any effective control in the white house. and i do think that, you know, for partisans watching, general kelly is a great american, served his entire life in service to the country.

he lost a son in the iraq war. but will general kelly tolerate a scaramucci in the west wing of the white house? and for sure a life-long u.s. marine corps officer has to be completely revolted by the language, by the disposition of scaramucci in these interviews. and so if scaramucci ever enters the white house with a hard pass as the actual communications director, it's a signal failure for the general in his ability to assert control in the white house. if jared kushner isn't out of there within the next couple of months, if ivanka isn't out of the west wing office in the next couple of months, if he doesn't have that power, if he doesn't have that authority, then he will wind up like every other person who is in close proximity to donald trump winds up, which is severely diminished over time.

so we'll see that play out over the next couple of months. >> charlie sykes, i got to say i agree with steve schmidt word for word on that. i don't think we've ever had an incoming white house chief of staff where the success and failure markers are so clear. >> yeah, and absolutely none of those things are going to happen. look, anthony scaramucci is donald trump's id. he didn't go out and -- that storm of profanity, obscenity and humiliation on his own aimed at reince priebus. as of today, the mooch is the guy who is riding high at the moment general kelly is coming in. so, look, a little bit earlier, you were running through all of the reasons why this was donald trump's worst week. and every single thing you mentioned comes back to donald trump. donald trump is the heart of this administration. donald trump is the cause of the dysfunction of this administration. he is the architect of his own disasters. nothing changes there.

anyone who thinks that any personnel change is going to change the trajectory of this administration is just ignoring the fact that we have a dysfunctional presidency because we have a dysfunctional president. and can i just say something about reince priebus? i mean who i've considered a friend for 15 years. i think he's a tragic figure in my mind. i think he's a good and decent man who is very effective, who made a seriously bad choice, a choice very similar to the choice a lot of republicans made, which was to capitulate to donald trump, to empower and enable donald trump because they believed somehow that they could, what, contain him in some particular way, that they could control him. and obviously this has ended in tears as i think it was completely predictable that it would. >> steve schmidt, the point of tweet control, white house chief of staff is usually the final eyes on any important communication, written communication going out of the white house, be it a speech, be it a press release, whatever it might be, anything of any importance. we know this president tweets

without anyone looking over his shoulder at least some of the time. what about general kelly and tweet control? >> well, it's an extraordinary concept, right, that the white house chief of staff has to police the phone of the president of the united states. and i'm going to disagree with charlie sykes and have a little bit of a harder edge on his evaluation of reince priebus. reince priebus grabbed the power. he grabbed the glory. he wanted the power. he wanted the job. he wanted to be white house chief of staff. and he abetted a president in a movement that is destroying conservatism as a coherent, intellectual philosophy, number one, that will do grave damage to the republican party over time. but this white house, this administration, on a day-to-day basis as it assaults and

degrades the office of president of the united states, it's doing real damage to the country. general kelly has spent his whole life in service to america. and now he serves an administration where all of the boundaries of proprietous behavior where we look at the guardrails in a democratic society, where the norms of democratic behavior are under assault. and general kelly is going to have to make a decision ultimately will he be an abettor of the degradation of our democratic institutions. will he try to control the president's worst impulses? will he stand opposed to it? what we know about reince priebus is that from the instant that sean spicer in orwellian

fashion demanded that we believe that the president's crowd sizes were bigger than his predecessor's and the lying and the mainstreaming of the lying that emanates from this white house, what will general kelly do about it? will he insist on a return to the norms of honesty and dignity that, you know, have typically been found around the office of president of the united states. we just don't know the answer to that at this hour. >> he won't be able to do that. what we've seen is that everybody that comes into the trump orbit is diminished, is corrupted by it. even good and decent people who rationalize in a variety of ways do aid and abet exactly what steve was talking about there. i got to tell you, no, i don't fundamentally disagree with you about it because watching what reince priebus did was heartbreaking for me. >> we're going to have to leave it there. we will know what general kelly's choice is in the question that steve schmidt has

posed i think fairly soon, and the option is always the principled resignation. if that's what he is driven to. thank you both very much for joining us tonight. really appreciate it. >> thank you, lawrence. coming up, the president's week could not have been worse, including his well-deserved public humiliation on the senate floor last night delivered by more than one profile in courage. per roll bounty is more absorbent, so the roll can last 50% longer than the leading ordinary brand.

so you get more "life" per roll. bounty, the quicker picker upper i'm leaving you, wesley. but why? you haven't noticed me in two years.

i was in a coma. well, i still deserve appreciation. who was there for you when you had amnesia? you know i can't remember that. stop this madness. if it's appreciation you want you should both get snapshot from progressive. it rewards good drivers with big discounts on car insurance. it's a miracle. i can walk again. go back to your room, susan lucci.

the resistance to president trump had its biggest victory yet at 1:29 a.m. when john

mccain walked onto the senate floor and said one word -- no. >> mr. peters. >> no. >> no. [ applause ] >> mr. portman. mr. reid. >> i have never heard senators gasp and applaud with so much surprise when a senator cast a vote. you could hear how surprised the democrats were when john mccain voted with them to kill the trump/mcconnell health care bill in the senate. but there was no surprise on the republican side, none. they all knew that this vote was coming. everyone had every right to believe that this vote was coming after john mccain's speech in the senate on tuesday,

which seemed to indicate that he was opposed to any version of a health care bill that was not produced through what he called regular order of the senate, in other words, through committee hearings and bipartisan input in committees, and on the floor of the senate. democrats interrupted that mccain speech on tuesday on the senate floor with applause. republicans did not because they knew what that speech meant. it meant mccain would vote no on what majority leader mcconnell was trying to do. but then he confused most observers outside of the senate. he voted yes on the motion to proceed to the debate. so john mccain was then immediately accused of voting to take health care away from millions of people. but that's not what happened. john mccain was following an old tradition of the senate in which no one used to oppose the beginning of simply having a debate. and as i said at that time, it still appeared that john mccain was going to vote with the republicans on the procedural votes.

but the real test would be how he voted on the actual legislation that mitch mcconnell presented. so john mccain voted yes on two procedural votes and then no on both of the legislative votes that mitch mcconnell brought to the senate. after john mccain's dramatic moment on the senate floor, twitter was instantly filled with the phrase "profile in courage" for john mccain. and that's the way it always is in the senate on close votes. that senator who casts that last vote that decides the issue gets the glory just as the player who scored the winning touchdown gets the glory no matter how much touchdowns were scored before that. john mccain's vote would have been meaningless if republican senators susan collins and lisa murkowski were not consistently strong and unwavering in their opposition to the republican legislation. twitter caught up with that fact quickly, and the profiles in courage were extended to include susan collins and lisa murkowski.

but many, many more people showed more courage in the resistance to the republican plans to take health coverage away from millions of people. the senators who voted against the mcconnell plan were simply doing their jobs, voting against something they believed would be bad for their states and bad for the country. but is that -- that is the way they should have voted. they know that. but how would they have voted? how would those senators have voted if the resistance had not taken to the streets starting the day after trump's inauguration? what did susan collins and lisa murkowski think when they saw the historic scale of opposition to this newly inaugurated president? what did they think when they saw people on television at town halls around the country held by republican members of the house of representatives when they were trying to pass a bill?

the resistance rising up at republican town halls made every republican senator take a closer look at this legislation. senators always want to find a way to vote with their party. it is democracy's job, the people's job, to show them the way to vote against their party. the resistance showed susan collins and lisa murkowski and finally john mccain the way. these people showed those senators the way. these are the real profiles in courage. these are the real winners of the legislative battle that came to an end in the senate. the senate had never seen anything like this before. people in wheelchairs being arrested at the majority leader's office. those people being arrested were not doing their jobs. they were not being paid to get arrested. they were taking chances with their lives. they were taking risks all to help 23 million people hold on to their health coverage. and they won. and they are the profiles in courage that america should be

honoring tonight for what they did to remind the congress day in and day out all year that this is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. i love you, couch.

you give us comfort. and we give you bare feet... ...backsweat and gordo's everything. i love you, but sometimes you stink. ♪ new febreze fabric refresher with odorclear technology... ...cleans away odors like never before. because the things you love the most can stink. and plug in febreze to keep your whole room fresh for up... ...to 45 days. breathe happy with new febreze. here's what the president had to say about the health care defeat today. >> i said from the beginning,

let obamacare implode and then do it. i turned out to be right. let obamacare implode. [ applause ] >> every one of those police officers in new york applauding the president's attack on obamacare today enjoys government-funded health insurance for themselves and for their families at very considerable cost to taxpayers, including taxpayers who cannot afford health insurance for themselves. joining us now, ana marie cox, a contributor to "the new york times" magazine and the host of the podcast, with friends like these. back with us, peter wehner. ana, the play on the senate turned out for me, anyway, the way i expected it to. i never saw a way mitch mcconnell could pass a bill with this much opposition out there. and mitch mcconnell at the end of the night got to say the

thing he's been dying to say since this health care bill showed up. his final words to the senate last night were, it's time to move on, which he seems very happy to be doing. >> yeah. i mean yes. i think that everyone there would like to move on, that this was unworkable for them in many ways although i have to say there's something kind of perverse about congratulating people for the courage to vote against this bill when, you know, it was more unpopular than nickelback or telemarketers. it took real courage to vote for this bill in some ways. i also wanted to add you did a great list of everyone we should be congratulating in the resistance, but specifically i want to say national adapt, which is the disability rights group, were the people that did the using their physical bodies as protest vehicles. they did protests not just in the capitol but around the country. you've probably seen pictures of the little lobbyists, who were the mothers and their children

who were there to actually again show these senators and these congressmen what they were voting against in terms of lifetime caps. so people around the country really did incredible work, and i have to say disability rights activists led the way for a lot of people. so i really want to honor them tonight. >> that's a good point. republican house member tom cole made a point i've been making too, which i think there was more republican opposition to it than was recorded in the vote. many of those senators wanted to be recorded as voting with their party but were hoping it didn't pass. let's listen what tom cole says. >> i actually think there was a number of other senators. he probably took the hit as john mccain does for several others. it was clear they weren't at 50. you know, they probably weren't at 49 quite frankly. so john mccain did what he always does. he stepped forward, took responsibility that probably other people needed to bear in addition to him. >> peter wehner, how do you read

the politics of this in the senate? do you think there was actually more opposition to it within the republican party than showed up in the vote count? >> i do because it was a historically unpopular bill being pushed by a historically unpopular president. the bill itself is incoherent. the rallying cry at the end was vote for this bill because it won't become law, which is insane. and i think that a lot of republicans were very, very wary about it and wanted to get away. i do want to make a broader point because i think that this calamity for republicans, legislative calamity, is really a manifestation and crystallization of certain mental habits that have developed over years with republicans. what i mean by that is there's been a devaluation of ideas and almost an allergy to governing, that politics became theatrics, not seriousness about governing. what that meant is that for seven years they said we're going to repeal and replace obamacare, and they had no idea

how they were going to do it. and then they elected donald trump as president, the most ignorant and out of his depth president ever. and so this is a very big moment, and i think it's going to have real damage politically to the republican party because the base is going to be enraged. but i think it needs to be seen in the longer arc of events, and i think this speaks quite poorly of the intellectual state of the republican party. >> the senate doesn't have the experts on health care that it used to have like jay rockefeller, ted kennedy, john chaffe on the republican side. pat moynihan and others who really made a study of it. ana, these senators, their attention is drawn to thinks either through their committee assignments, or it's forced by the public. those are the only two ways these people pay attention to things, and i want to keep coming back to the people out there who basically started saying to these senators right after the inauguration, you better take a look at what this legislation is because you're

going to hear from us. >> yeah. using their bodies and their stories to draw attention to the help that the aca has given them, particularly through medicaid expansion. you know, it was incredibly devious thing that the republicans did to put medicaid on the table at all in what they were calling the repeal of obamacare because, you know, medicaid wasn't something that people were clamoring to get rid of except if you were paul ryan at a keg party 20 years ago. you know, i have to say that, you know, lost in all this, i think peter made a great point, that the republican party sort of ceded politics to theatrics. they elected an incredibly theatrical president. lost in all this is the aca is an actually incredible conservative and market-driven bill. it's the place republicans should start if they want a market-driven reform to what everyone agrees was pre-aca a pretty bad deal. they've vacated a lot of arguments they have for

democratic reform. it give us democrats an opportunity. i feel like we're more primed for medicare for all than we were eight years ago, which is kind of an incredible thing to say. so, you know, thanks, i guess. >> and that's where it stands tonight. thank you both for joining us at the end of this historic week in washington. thank you very much. >> thanks a lot, lawrence. >> thank you. coming up, we have breaking news tonight. the president has decided to sign the russia sanctions bill after congress threatened to override a trump veto of that bill. it's here, but it's going by fast. the opportunity of the year is back: the mercedes-benz summer event. get to your dealer today for incredible once-a-season offers, and start firing up those grilles. lease the gle350 for $579 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing.

tha...oh, burnt-on gravy?ie. ...gotta rinse that. nope. no way. nada. really? dish issues? throw it all in. new cascade platinum powers through... even burnt-on gravy. nice. cascade.

the energy conscious whopeople among usle? say small actions can add up to something... humongous. a little thing here. a little thing there. starts to feel like a badge maybe millions can wear. who are all these caretakers, advocates too? turns out, it's californians it's me and it's you. don't stop now, it's easy to add to the routine. join energy upgrade california

and do your thing. tonight the white house announced that the president intends to sign the tough new package of sanctions against russia passed by congress. the bill that the president intends to sign also includes sanctions against north korea which today launched another intercontinental ballistic missile. some experts say that that missile poses the biggest threat yet to the united states. former acting cia director john mclaughlin joins us after this break. one second i was driving and then the next... they just didn't stop and then... i'm really sorry. i wrecked the subaru. i wrecked it. you're ok. that's all that matters. (vo) a lifetime commitment to getting them home safely. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru.

bounty is more absorbent,mom" per roll so the roll can last 50% longer than the leading ordinary brand. so you get more "life" per roll. bounty, the quicker picker upper

it's the only country on earth that represents of a existential threat to the united states. only russia has the capability to destroy the united states. it is my belief that russian aggression, if you will or further aggression can be deterred through the proper use of tools. >> that's u.s. army chief of staff general mark milley. the former acting director of the cia and a 32-year veteran of the agency. he is a national security analyst for msnbc. your reaction to the president's agreement to sign the russia sanctions bill and also include sanctions against north korea. >> it's a good thing, lawrence. i'm glad the president will do that. i think he will. the congress hemmed him in. the sanctions are a good thing.

one thing i learned dealing with russians, if they don't respect you they need to feel steel and the congress has given them some. this is all good. it won't necessarily make relations worse. in fact the russians get this. they respect you. >> have you worked with general john kelly the incoming white house chief of staff? and what do you think his advice to the president will now be on north korea given this latest missile test? that he is now having moved from homeland security in the position of advising the president on everything? >> i've been an adviser to general kelly in his homeland security job. i think his advice will be very considered here. in other words, i don't think he is going to recommend a military response. i think he is going to recommend one that coordinates all of the tools of the u.s. government, diplomacy, showing a little military leg short of a

pre-emptive strike, deterrence possibly use of cyber, coordinating with allies, south koreans, the japanese, bringing in the chinese. this will be complex. the thing i worry about is this government, this administration is not well prepared to orchestrate something that complicated. general kelly can help here i think. >> talk about what you -- what you think general kelly is walking into. you've worked with many white houses over the years. >> yes. >> you have a sense how it operates how it should operate what an efficient white house feels like, what an inefficient white house feels like. this is utterly chaotic unlike anything we've seen and in walks general kelly monday morning. >> i feel bad for him. he is an honorable man. i'm sure he did in because public service it is in his dna. he's a 45-year marine veteran. he will tell you in his 45 years in the morins he never had a political movement. he is a public servant, very serious person, very disciplined. he is walking into a terrible situation. certainly the most chaotic white

house i've heard of and i've served seven presidents, known the white house interior pretty well in three or four administrations. i think he has his job cut out. one thing worth thinking about is i think he and h.r. mcmaster have a natural alliance. to the extent that mcmaster has been trying to bring some traction to this mess in the white house, he gaines help from kelly. but kelly is walking into the most challenging situation the chief of staff can be in. >> that's a good point general mcmasters is one of the happiest people to see who comes to work on machined morning it sound like john mclaughlin gets the last word thanks for joining us. appreciate it. >> "the 11th hour" with brian williams starts now. the breaking news tonight, reince priebus is in the history books. the shortest serving of any white house chief of staff. he is out, after being under heavy fire and a former four-star marine general is in. so, tonight, who is general john

kelly? the man who had been running homeland security. and can he bring a chain of command to the wild west of the west wing? as the president shrugs off the most spectacular failure, no replace and no way to predict what's next, except for the 11th hour, which we gbegins now. on a friday night, good evening from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. day 190 of the trump administration. and reince priebus of wisconsin, will soon be a private citizen again. and tonight, he's making plans to, as they say, spend more time with his family. his replacement as homeland security secretary, john kelly, a four-star marine general. he starts on monday. and in trump white house terms, that is ages from now. priebus granted his exit interview, the first one to cnn. notable because the