beth, tell me something i don't know. >> today treasury secretary steve mnuchen seemed to put on the brake goes of putting harriet tubman on the 20. if that's the case, only one woman has been on the face of paper currency in the united states, that's martha washington and no african-american. >> tim. >> donald trump's favorite bond character is gold finger. >> we're back to school, but what is weighing on the minds of students across this nation, charlottesville and obviously harvey. >> thank you, everybody. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. tonight on "all in." >> how long was the meeting? >> 20 minutes or so. >> paul manafort was on his -- >> on his phone. >> the whole time? >> pretty much. >> the nbc exclusive report about what trump's campaign manager was doing on his phone during that meeting with russians. he was taking notes about the rnc. >> and that meeting is emerging as a major focus of the investigation. >> tonight, what this means for the russia probe and why the president's lawyers are already

talking to the special counsel about obstruction of justice. >> i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made-up story. it is an excuse. >> then, new dangers in texas as the floodwaters cause explosions at a major chemical plant, and how to get rich in donald trump's washington. the story of how the man who promised to drain the swamp created an entire new ecosystem. >> drain the swamp! >> "all in" starts right now. ♪ good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. we have a lot, a lot of breaking news tonight on the russia investigation, including a report by the washington street journal that the president's attorneys have been making the case to special counsel robert mueller that the president did not commit obstruction of justice when he fired former fbi director james comey. much more on that coming up. get this, "daily beast"

reporting mueller enlisted help from the irs for his investigation which could give him access to the president's tax returns. first, the exclusive reporting from nbc news that notes taken by paul manafort at that infamous meeting with the russian lawyer, among others during the campaign, contain a cryptic reference to political contribution. ever since it was first revealed earlier this summer the president and his allies have sought to obscure or downplay the significance of that meeting which took place at trump tower in new york in june of 2016, and was attended by the president's son, donald trump jr., paul manafort, then the campaign chairman, and jared kushner and now a white house adviser. in an initial statement, trump jr. explained he and the russian lawyer primarily discussed a program about the adoption of russian children. it was only after he released e-mail, and i quote the e-mail here, some officials documents and information that would incriminate hillary in her

dealings with russia. framed as part of russia and its government support for mr. trump, to which trump jr. responded if it is what you say, i love it, especially later in the summer. later in the summer, the hacked e-mails would be made public. according to white house, the president himself waited on that initial misleading statement about adoptions released by don jr. and now nbc news reports that the special counsel's team is investigating whether the president was trying to hide the real purpose of the trump tower meeting. in their efforts to down play the meeting, both the president and his son have emphasized that kushner left after a few minutes and manafort was said to be on his phone the whole time. >> how long was the meeting? >> 20 minutes or so. >> about 20 minutes. and jared left after five or ten? >> yes. >> like she said. and paul manafort was on his -- >> on his phone. >> the whole time? >> pretty much. it was pretty apparent this is not what we were in there talking about. >> it was a short meeting. it was a meeting that went very,

very quickly, very fast. two other people in the room. they -- i guess one of them left almost immediately and the other one was not really focused on the meeting. >> but it turns out manafort wasn't just playing candy crush. it was actually typing up notes about the meeting that he was in on his smartphone. according to nbc news sources those notes contained a reference to political contributions and rnc in close proximity. it is, of course, illegal for foreign nationals to donate to u.s. elections. manafort's spokesman responded in a statement, it is 100% false to suggest this meeting included any discussion of donations from russian sources to either the trump campaign or the republican party. mr. manafort provided the senate intelligence committee with the facts and his notes, the speculation and conjecture is pointless and wrong. nbc's ken delaney was one of the reporters that broke that story. what can you tell us about these notes that manafort wrote? >> reporter: chris, our sources are telling us they're cryptic notes, you know, of one or two words, certainly not a verbatim

transcript or even a set of very good notes, but actually hard to discern and hard to understand. but some of the words included rnc, a reference to republican national committee, and some reference to political contributions. earlier in the day, chris, our sources were saying the word donations was explicitly in quotes in the notes. we're told now that word was not in there, it was a different set of words but the message was clear. actually, it is not clear because investigators are saying they're not sure exactly what is going on here, but they have an obligation to and are very interested into looking into the question of whether the subject of donations from russians to the trump campaign was even broached at this meeting from either side. that's a hugely important issue because, as you just said, that would be illegal. it would be illegal for the russians to donate, it would be illegal for any political campaign to accept foreign donation goes. so that has got certainly the congressional committee interested in getting to the bottom of that. >> one small point that seems relevant to me here, and this is independent of what the content of the notes are, is that there

has been a story told by the folks in the trump circle, don jr., the president of the united states and others, that this was a nothing meeting, it was a bust. they kept having to admit there were more and more people there as they went on. one of the main issues that paul manafort was on his phone. it appears he was taking notes of the meeting, right? >> reporter: that's exactly right. i agree with you, that's a significant thing because it's been portrayed he was on his phone, paying attention to other things, and he may well have been looking at e-mail but we know he was also taking these notes which have been turned over to the house and the senate and the special counsel, robert mueller. you're absolutely right. he was paying enough attention to take some notes, and those notes are now under scrutiny. >> my understanding is when this story first broke and it was sort of shaken loose by reporters and donald -- at "the new york times" and particularly donald jr. released the e-mail to sort of get out ahead of the story, that mueller's team didn't know about this meeting. the reporting now suggests how important is this meeting to their investigation?

>> reporter: it is looming really large, chris. it is not clear whether mueller's team knew about the meeting. i did see some reporting to that effect. i don't think that question is fully answered. what we know now is they're heavily scrutinizing this meeting. as you know, nbc news reported a couple of days ago one of the things they're looking at is why president trump crafted this highly-misleading statement on his son's behave, suggesting the meeting was just about russian adoptions and it was kind of short and nothing to see here. this was before the e-mails were released. in fact, it was a meeting carried out as you said with an explicit promise of help from the russian government, and there's a lot we don't know about it. even if it was as the russians involved assert, you know, really a meeting about the really sort of esoteric set of sanctions and nothing specific was offered, the fact that donald trump jr. accepted the meeting with a promise of help and incriminating information about hillary clinton is a red flag for investigators who are wondering what else he accept, because it showed they were willing to play ball with the

russians. >> all right. ken delaney, thank you. >> three trump campaign officials who attended the trump tower meeting, jared kushner, paul manafort and donald trump jr., kushner seems to have faced the least scrutiny over his participation. that's not the only meeting kushner failed to disclose with the russians. he met with the russian ambassador to the u.s. and the head of a sanctioned russian bank, contacts he repeatedly omitted from security clearance funds under penalty of perjury. today new reporting from "bloomberg" lays out what could be meaningful context for his conduct. his family real estate owes hundreds of million also of dollars on a office building on fifth avenue. investigative reporter who could wrote the story for "bloomberg" is joining me now. the lead of the story is kushner

wakes up every morning with the problem and what is that problem? >> reporter: the problem is they overpaid for the building. they bought it in 2007 and set a record price at the time for any single building. ever since, they've been chasing that, trying to make it work. it was highly leveraged to begin with. they had to sell off the very lucrative portions of the building where the retail is and they later had to refinance it when it was teetering on the brink of insolvency. so they've been trying to find ways to pump money into that. they brought in different partners, bornedo, the well-established and well capitalized u.s. company is there as a partner now. but even now the building is not meeting -- it is not -- in some quarters it is losing money. they've been chasing money, trying to find foreign investors. it is a question they can do it before they have to -- the mortgage expires in february 2019. >> so it is a race against time, and they need capital infusions, and that has led them at least in one instance to foray in one

foreign nation that might have reezon re reasons to the son-in-law of the president of the united states, which is china. what were they trying to do? >> reporter: china is where they got the farthest. an insurance company that invests in real estate and development elsewhere was in negotiations with the kushners, and they said it began in 2015. it heated up during the end of the election and after the election, but before the inauguration when jared kushner met with the head of ongbong. they hammered out a proposal that would have had about two billion dollars of ongbong's money. there's a plan to knock down the existing tower and build a gigantic 80-story glittering tower. the kushners would have marketed 400 million out of the deal. they would have been able to take 400 million in cash and still keep part of their stake in the building. when it was first reported, there was so much scrutiny that the -- kushmer had to walk away

from the deal and ongbong walk away. they've been searching elsewhere for money and as far as we know have not yet found it. >> the context is this would leave, one imagines, jared kushner open to the possibility of manipulation from a hostile foreign actor, say, a russian connected bank if he is in fact as desperate as it appears he and his foreign company are to make sure they can get foreign capital infusion to make sure this thing doesn't go bust, right? >> that's a question i think people in congress are asking. to be fair to the kushners, there's no evidence that there was anything asked for at the time, and the russian meeting you mentioned, you know, jared kushner says it was a diplomatic message meeting. the russians say otherwise. the head of the bank, sergei gorkov said it was a business meeting. vladimir putin's spokesman said it was a business meeting. so there's a dispute. jared kushner said i did not collude, i did not mix business and my diplomatic effort, and i

think that's what congress and mueller will be looking at now. >> all right. david, thank you for your time tonight. >> reporter: thank you. >> natasha, chief investigative correspondent for yahoo! news. natasha, you have been closely tracking all of this russia news. would be big takeaway and from the nbc news story about manafort in the meeting, anyway you slice it manafort is at the center. >> yes. i think today with the news that mueller has enlisted the help of the new york attorney general eric schneiderman to help him investigate paul manafort's tax history, perhaps some financial crimes he may have committed in the state of new york really is an indication that he is really at the center of this investigation. it is not -- it is the dual purpose of mueller kind of enlisting schneiderman can help them both. schneiderman is focused on the

money laundering, he wants to know if manafort laundered money in new york real estate. mueller wants to know whether it was indebted to russian interests. in that sense partnering with schneiderman who can investigate the money laundering in depth, he can figure out where did the money come from, and in that sense he can help him with the russian investigation. >> there's one more report by someone who is a frequent guest on this program, the criminal division of the irs is now teaming with mueller, which also seems significant because that's a trove of information for his investigators. >> sure. if you look at what all indications are that mueller is focused on here is exactly as natasha just said, those real estate dealings and the business dealings that manafort had in particular with two russian

oligarchs. one is daraposka, who is an aluminum magnate, close to vladimir putin, and mueller's business relationships with daraposka go back to 2007. rereported last year on the document in the cayman islands that they had set up to invest in telecommunications. they later had a falling out. but that was one big source of concern and a red flag for the investigators. also going back, there's another oligarch, demetree furtash who is under indictment by the justice department and there are documents that show mueller

and -- >> manafort. >> i'm sorry, manafort, manafort and furtash had a scheme to buy the drake hotel in new york, and that was alleged to have been a scheme to allow furtash to launder illicit funds from his business in ukraine. from all indications, that's a huge chunk of what mueller is looking at here. >> you know, so there's sort of a -- i think it is important to think of this procedurally, which is there are a lot of loose threads with manaforts, a lot of indicators. people should remember he left the campaign because he discovered a ledger in ukraine suggesting he got illegal payments. that is a means of getting to the bottom of it. close to the bottom is this meeting. what are the questions you have as someone that tracked this very closely about what happened after that meeting? >> after the trump tower meeting? >> yes. >> well, you would have to look at all of the things that

happened during the summer after the trump tower meeting. you would have to look at the timing of, you know, when the e-mails were released, whether there was a kind of quid pro quo that was exchanged during that meeting between manafort, jared kushner and donald trump jr. and these russians who are very clearly closely connected to the kremlin. so i think that looking through everything that happened that summer through the lens of that meeting, having occurred very early on in the summer explains a lot, or it can explain a lot depending on how you look at it. the fact that manafort now faces the possibility of criminal prosecution -- we don't know if he -- he clearly hasn't been charged yet. what do you think the sort of calculation he's thinking of is? >> well, he wants to know how strong a case mueller is building against him. look, standard prosecutorial practice is you throw the book, build the strongest case you can at manafort, and then see if he'll flip and cooperate in the investigation. i should say at this point so

far there's no indication that he is open to that. my understanding is that the offer's been out there on a number of occasions and he's rebuffed it. so, you know, that may have been the big reason why the fbi conducted that search, unannounced search of manafort's home a couple of weeks ago to spook him, to let him know how serious this investigation is. but, you know, these are the kind of, you know -- this is the way the prosecutorial practice works in the united states. you try to build the strongest case as you can in hopes of getting cooperation. we're just going to have to see whether that happens in this or not. >> all right. natasha bertrand and michael isikoff, thank you both. tonight from collusion to obstruction of justice, new reporting the president's lawyers met with mueller to argue that he did not obstruct justice.

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regardless of recommendation, i was going to fire comey, knowing there was no good time to do it. in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made-up story, it is an excuse by the democrats for having lost an election that they should have won. >> it has become increasingly clear separate from any possible collusion case, special counsel robert mueller is pursuing the possibility of an obstruction of justice case against president trump. the "wall street journal" reporting today that the president as lawyers have met with mueller several times in recent months and submitted memos arguing that the president didn't obstruct justice by firing comey and calling into question comey's reliability as a potential witness. trump lawyer john dowd said he would not discuss his communications with mueller. another lawyer said, quote, we have respect for the special counsel. out of respect for his process

we will not discuss incremental responses. on monday they reported that they are keenly focused on the president's role in crafting the misleading response to the report that his son don jr. met with a kremlin-linked lawyer during the campaign. one of the reporters who broke the story about the trump's meeting with the lawyer joins me now. how does it work? >> they've met with robert mueller in person and his team. it is unclear whether it was at mueller's office -- presumably. >> and these memos, these are sort of trying to make the case ahead of time that the president didn't obstruct justice. >> that's right. there were two memos, at least two memos we know of. the first was submitted with regard to -- it was a legal argument by the president's lawyers concerning what they see as an argument why he can't be charged or investigated for

obstructing justice. and the second concerned their questions about comey's -- jim comey's reliability as a potential witness. >> so the first one indicates to me they have some reason to think that -- i mean this has been reported, but the existence of the memo coming from his own lawyers would seem to agree with the reporting this is something mueller is in fact investigating and pursuing. >> i suppose you could interpret it. >> presumably they're not just writing these. >> presumably. >> i guess my question, is it normal for this kind of interactions in these sort of settings between defense attorneys and investigator/prosecutor? >> it is not unusual for criminal defense attorneys to meet with a prosecutorial team. it is a little bit early in the process for this to be playing out, and it is a little bit -- it is somewhat unusual that they actually submitted written arguments. >> have you read the memos?

>> i -- i can't really get into that. >> you can't answer that? >> no. >> what is serious is there's a level of sort of criminal exposure for people involved in this, and then there's intense theoretical constitutional questions about what the president can and can't be pursued for. >> sure. >> i guess what do you know, what is your reporting indicate about how they're thinking about that from the trump legal perspective or mueller's team? >> from the trump legal perspective, their primary argument would seem to be as far as our reporting shows that he -- that he didn't obstruct justice because his executive authority gives him the ability to hire and fire people including the director of the fbi at will. >> right, this fundamental idea that definitionally the president exercising the constitutional power vested in him to relieve somebody who works for him cannot be obstruction of justice. >> right.

and that doesn't speak to his intent in firing whoever he is firing which will be a factor in whatever consideration of charges mueller's team may weigh. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> with us, former federal prosecutor, department of justice, national security, carrie cordero. what is your reaction to the news? >> it is interesting. the description given the memo sounds like perhaps they try to cover a couple of things. one, perhaps whether or not the president can be charged with a crime. it sounds like perhaps the memos talk about that issue. second of all, it sounds like maybe the memos get into whether or not the president's conduct constitutes obstruction. those are two distinct legal issues. one, whether or not a sitting president can be charged with something and constitutional lawyers disagree about that question. there are arguments that a sitting president can be charged with something and there have been counter arguments made by constitutional lawyers all over

the country that he can or cannot. so that's a disagreement. on the obstruction piece, it is really interesting if they actually are arguing on the merits of whether or not his conduct was obstruction, because if they're only focusing -- again, this is just speculation because we haven't seen the memos. but if they're only arguing that the firing of director comey was not obstruction, then they're really on their heels because that is just one piece of what a potential case for obstruction could cover, which i would suggest would be a whole range of behaviors that the president has engaged in since last winter, that you can start all the way back with the dinner that he had with comey trying to get the flynn case shut down to the firing to behaviors after the firing, which include tweets that he sent about wire tapping, tweets that he sent that could be interpreted as sort of threatening former director comey as a witness when he said there might be tapes out there,

to talking to other government officials regarding their knowledge or their ability to shut down the investigation. so if the memo from the white house is focusing only on the firing, then -- then i think they're missing the bigger picture because an obstruction case is part of a pattern of behavior of this president since last spring and all through this summer. we can look to a variety of events, acts, statements, tweets that he's made that all lend toward a case of obstruction. >> you know, i know some people -- i've reported on financial prosecutions a little bit. i know some folks who have reported on white collar defense, and they said one of the approaches of, you know, very adapt white collar defendants is to try to sort of not have an adversarial posture towards prosecutors, a kind of partnership relationship, we're working with you, we're giving you stuff. it is interesting to me that's the tone being struck by these, you know, very accomplished and highly-compensated criminal

defense attorneys the president has retained. >> well, it might be part of the strategy of ty cobb who is one of the newer additions to the president's legal team to try to see if they can work something out. but, look, you played the clip of the interview with the president with lester holt that took place in may. i think that was the clip you played at the beginning. and the president basically said that his purpose in firing the director was to make the russia case go away. so they -- i think it can't hurt as a strategy to try to start this off in a working type relationship, but there's a lot of facts out there over the course of the last six months or so that -- six to eight months that are not good facts for the president when it comes to obstruction. >> all right. carrie cordero, thank you for bringing your expertise in all of this. appreciate it. >> thanks. >> coming up, there is money to be made in trump's washington. how much? well, it depends on how close you can get to the president. that fascinating story just ahead. flat

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connecticut senator chris murphy was dumbfounded by a trump administration decision that he tweeted, this is a joke, right? basically akin to nominating influenza to be surgeon general. he was referring to the nominee to head the division of the education department that's responsible for policing deceptive practices in higher ed. that nominee comes from a university that was cited for deceptive practices in higher ed. julian shmoke will be in charge of the student aiden forcement unit. he was formerly a dean at devry university which is a for-profit university which last year agreed to a $100 million

settlement with the federal trade commission,ageing they misled prospective students with ads that touted high success rates and help with employment after graduation. it is not at all unusual for federal agencies to hire people with experience in the industries they're assigned to regulate. what is a bit more unusual is that this appointment was approved by a president who himself agreed to a $25 million lawsuit to settle fraud claims against him for his for-profit education venture, trump university. remember that? that's the kind of thing that's happening right out in the open in the trump administration. now imagine for a second what the underbelly of lobbying looks like in trump's washington. the guy who wrote the definitive piece perhaps on that joins me next.

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♪ >> [chanting: drain the swamp! drain the swamp! ]. >> when i first heard that term i hated it. i said, oh, that is so hoke. i said, look, let's give it a shot. i tried it, the place went crazy. then i said, maybe we'll try it again. the place went crazy. and now i like it.

>> there you have it right there. during the campaign donald trump pitched himself as the outsider who would drain the swamp in washington d.c., but as president he created an entirely new environment. that environment laid out in a fascinating new piece in the "new york magazine." he joins me now. a former white house cabinet secretary chris lu. it is a great piece, nick. i guess the question is what surprised you and what's changed about this era of influence peddling in washington? >> what was so new to me was trump in fact, despite the fact he has hired 100 lobbyists to his different agencies, he in fact arrived in washington with a short baggage train of people and obligations. he was sort of a not known to the permanent class so no one knew who to call. up sprung this whole class, a small one but a potent one, of people who just happened to know who to call in the white house. >> like -- and you illustrate,

even something like the -- the -- you know, the new zealand ambassador or, you know, the government wants to get in touch with the president-elect, they don't have a number. they don't have a number, so in pops a guy who knows trump and i can make the connection for you. >> that's right. so it started that way. and then it became clear that there was so much chaos in the west wing, that there was then a heightened market for anybody who could guide you through what was really happening, who is up, who is down, and, of course, how do i talk to the president. >> right. >> how do i deal with this guy who seems so mercurial and changes his mind, bashes companies on twitter and costs them million also of dollars in market cap. companies wanted to know, what do i do? they felt powerless for first time in a long way. >> you served in the obama administration and there's a justifiable -- president obama ran against. i mean he talked about how

corrupt and rigged the system was what do you say to people who read this article or look at the trump administration and say, ever was it thus. like this is just the way washington works, it is sort of corrupt, people trade favors for influence? >> look, chris, lobbying has been around as long as we've had a government. but what i'm struck about in this piece is how brazen the selling of access is. say whatever you want about obama's commitment to ethics, but this is really pay-to-play. this is not about hiring people who have policy expertise or understand arcane set of policy. it is selling access to the president, and now more than ever there are more ways to do that. you can sit in the lobby of the trump hotel. you can book an event at mar-a-lago. you can even tweet a photo of yourself with a silly baseball hat and the president might retweet that. this is really not about just "the insider"s who are selling the access. it is about the susceptibility of the president to flattery. >> chris brought up something interesting about policy.

right. a lot of the dirty secret of d.c. is that a huge amount of policy is developed buy out side groups and lobbyist groups representing their interests, because there's a million things crossing overall the time, right? you know, this tax code for paper mills, so who writes that provision? well, the paper mill lobbyists have it. there's so little policy being developed in the white house, that's what is striking in the article. to chris's points, it is access. there's no agenda there they're trying to deal with. >> the problem here was that the policy process was so broken in this white house, it is probably getting better now but there was no real process to latch into for the conventional lobbyist. the big lobbyists in d.c. have learned to be policy experts. they have relationships with polling firms and advertising. they come to you with the bill written and the coalition of trade groups to support it. >> right. >> and the polling that backs it up and hand it to you. they know how, you know, kind of all of the pressure points in the system. in the trump white house there was no process.

it was about who gets into the room of the president, who can leave an article on his desk, who happens to know what he's watching on tv. if i can get a mention while he's watching the shows, if i'm on one of the shows, all of a sudden the conventional poi situa policy process was gone. it was possible to imagine, it was possible to imagine a single phone call to the right person at the right time might reshape the whole decisionmaking apparatus of the white house. >> do you think it is sustainable, chris? i remember someone famously -- i forget. someone said this to me about getting, you know, people in the white house talking about people in white houses go to jail, it happens in almost every administration. it didn't happen in the obama white house, but there are a lot of legal trip wires in this thicket that it seems to me a lot of folks in nick's article are running the risk of tripping over. >> well, and it is not only that people who are trying to

influence. you have seen the. this is an administration that has not taken ethics seriously and it is going to catch up to them at a certain point. >> do you think there is -- i talked to someone, a young up and coming conservative in washington at one point who was not going to work for the administration because they were afraid they would end up with criminal exposure. how much does the sort of specter of that loom over all of this? >> i'm not sure how much. i mean, look, as i see it, corey lou endown sky is three or four of the central characters in this piece. i actually take the view that cor cor corey lewandowski does. hey, i'll get access. everybody else says, i don't do

access, i provide expertise. >> thanks for joining us. coming up, they say the only thing certain in life are death and taxes. now trump's tax plan on the other hand, well, that's one thing too. next. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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every great why needs a great how. ♪ ♪ tonight, the white house has been crystal clear from the start they've been hard at work on writing a tax plan. the president saying as early as february that it was almost ready to be released. >> so we're doing a massive tax plan that's coming along really well. it will be submitted in the not-too-distant future. >> we want to get it done by the august recess. >> we're introducing a tax plan. >> before we do the tax, which is actually very well-finalized. >> the tax reform and tax plan is doing well, will be out soon. >> the tax cut will be major. >> it is going to be simple. >> one of the largest tax cuts in history. >> and the whole tax plan is

wonderful. >> so on this last day of august, where does that tax plan stand? >> the president made a very impassioned plea yesterday, support for the tax package, but many on wall street are a little confused because there is no package. could you explain to us why there's no package or details about rates and things like that coming from the white house? >> well, first of all there absolutely is a package. since january i've been working with gary kohn and the leadership on this plan. so we have a very detailed plan. >> but when you say there's a package, are there numbers and rates and, you know, groekt estimates and things like that in the package we can talk about? >> package, what's in the package? the treasury secretary's answer to that simple question, it is coming along really well, in 60 seconds. and hurry in to enjoy our new crab melt, part of our seafood lover's lunch weekdays just $9.99

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sheet of paper with some broad goals and clip art white house on the top. for months president trump has touted his wonderful tax plan that was coming along very well. last week "politico" reported the white house would not release a plan, leaving it instead to congress. today the treasury secretary was asked, is there an actual trump plan or not? >> well, first of all, as i said, we've been working on the details. you know we came out with a statement on the group of six when we started this process. >> right. >> we wanted to bring the three of us together, make sure that there was one plan with the administration, the house and the senate. we've done that. the house and the senate are now socializing the plan with their members. we're going to release a blueprint and it is going to go to committee. >> did you follow that? well, the "wall street journal" clarified tonight after speaking to mnuchin, although congressional committees will write the tax bill, mr. mnuchin

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new concerns in texas in the aftermath of hurricane harvey after a series of explosions at a flooded chemical plant. the plant is in cross by, which is about 25 miles northeast of houston. it makes organic organic peroxides used in things like pvc piping. but the compounds are highly flammable needing refridgeratio so they don't spontaneously explode nap's what happened early this morning after the floods knocked out the power and backup tower, blasting a trailer apart, sending flames shooting into the sky and leaving behind a blume of black smoke. people around a 1.5 mile radius to have plant had been evacuated. more blasts are expected because the company that owns the chemical plant says they cannot reach the plant let alone stop the explosions. this morning just one container exploded but there are eight more on site. >> we fully expect that the other eight containers will do

the same thing. water is still in our facility and preventing us from accessing the facility. and we believe at this point that the safest thing to do is to allow the other eight containers, product in those to degrade and burn. >> the crosby plant is far from the other hazard. hairy county has a dozen superfund sites. the area hit by harvey is home to a significant chunk of the nation's petroleum industry. the largest refinery shut down because of flooding. now harvey has left texas, it's slowly moving northeast as a tropical depression. it destroyed 7,000 homes, 32 people were killed and that number is only expected to rise. my friend susie cracks me up. but one laugh,

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rethink your allergy pills. flonase sensimist allergy relief helps block 6 key inflammatory substances with a gentle mist. most allergy pills only block one. and 6 is greater than one. flonase sensimist. ♪ congress returns next week. lawmakers will be faced with a decision. whether to once again try to kill obamacare or just try to make it work better. and their decision, what they decide to do could mean the end of one era and the beginning of another. despite weeks of protests this summer and a failed vote in july, president trump insists continues to insist that congress get rid of the affordable care act. congress could still attempt to pass a bill to kill obamacare or the white house could mismanage and sabotage the health care law into the ground.

but there's a third option, fixing the law. a bipartisan group of governors is offering a proposal even as the trump administration was part of its continuing bid to undermine the law announced today drastic cut in funds to promote acl enrollment next year. the governors spear heading the bill told me earlier why there's a mistake. >> i would prefer for them to have taken that $100 million to aim in a different direction. one of the things that we have to think about is what are the effective programs beyond lowering the cost of health insurance to get people to sign up. perhaps states could offer bonuses. there's a variety of ways to think about it. to me the fact that we're paying people to do what they already should have been doing doesn't make sense but i would prefer to use that money to try to create a healthiier pool wh which lowes the cost of health insurance for

everybody who needs it. >> there's two line items, the navigators which i think you're referring to which looks like it's getting cut 40%, the advertises budget being cut by t 90%. governor hickenlooper, are you afraid of a worst of all scenarios taking shape in which the law remains the law on the books but the executive manages it in such a way that it becomes essentially expensive and unworkable? >> well, certainly that's been discussed before and really has been threatened. i think right now what governor kasich and i have been working on demonstrates that there is an appetite for a bipartisan solution on this. and this is a good example. you're marketing to try to get young people to join up and get health insurance and somehow they didn't think it's worth it. well one reason is it's a little too expensive for many of them. as john just said, if we're able to get more people into the exchanges, more people into

private insurance, the overall pool gets larger and the rate goes down. that's part of it. then provide incentives or maybe bonuses as john just suggested, maybe there are ways we can increase the penalties a little bit. i'm not talking necessarily about the mandate penalties but people were jumping in and out and in and out of insurance. maybe there should be a stiffer penalty in doing that. there might be a way to navigate that so we don't need as much advertiser money. right now we have never needs for the money. >> we've got -- the broad outlines here is continue those what are called csr payments which have been up in the air, a stabilization fund for two years, a little change in what essential health benefits are. basically many the broad scope of things, not major changes. my question to you governor kasich is this. can you imagine republicans and demeanors in the house voting for this and if that happens, would it represent a final end

to the era of inplaquable destroy obamacare plolitics? >> every time you attach a name to something, it raises hack ls. here's what we're want to do. we want to stabilize the insurance market so millions of people don't lose their coverage. it's cratering right now. these insurance companies are uncertain about what the situation is. they want to leave the marketplace. we can't have that. that's number one. number two, give states the power and authority to redesign a program within certain guidelines. you don't want people being stripped of coverage and you want to make sure they have comprehensive coverage. there's ways to achieve that. we got to get beyond the naming of all of this. the fact is that the exchange to let people have more choice is a good thing. stabilize it and remove to give states what they're begging for

and then move again to make sure we're awarded quality payments and not just quantity payments. so yeah, i think if we can do that, that's what john and i are trying to do. it's reasonable. it meets the philosophy. if you want to keep obamacare, keep it. if you want to change things and design something that fits your population and your state, you can. just within certain limits. >> all right, governor john kasich and john higen hooper, thank you both. >> you're welcome. >> that is all in for this evening. the rachel maddow show starts right now. >> thank you very much. have a good evening. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. rachel has the night off. we're following several stories including a new clue about the scope of the special counsel investigation and the resources open expertise being staped by robert mueller as his work proceeds. we're keeping an eye on developing storie