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All in with Chris Hayes, transcript 3/24/2017

All in with Chris Hayes, transcript 3/24/2017

Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES Date: March 24, 2017 Guest: CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC ALL IN CHRIS HAYES HOST:  Tonight on All In.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  This is the man who wrote the art of the deal. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Remember, his book was called the art of the deal. 

KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT FOR DONALD TRUMP:  This is Donald Trump in his, a negotiator, the deal maker, the decision maker. 

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  A good deal maker will make great deals.

REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE:  There will be no deal. 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  The president called me and said, look, I`m pulling the bill. 

HAYES:  President Trump dealt a stunning rebuke on his first major initiative. 

TRUMP:  I worked as a team player and would have loved to have seen it pass. 

HAYES:  The blame game begins. 

TRUMP:  We learned a lot about loyalty.  We learned a lot about the vote- getting process. 

HAYES:  Republicans are left reeling. 

RYAN:  I won`t sugar coat this, this is a disappointing day for us. 

HAYES:  And democrats are declaring victory.

Today is a great day for our country.  It`s a victory.

HAYES:  Tonight, Senator Bernie Sanders on how it all fell apart after seven years of promising repeal. 

TRUMP:  Real change begins with immediately repealing and replacing the disaster known as Obamacare.

HAYES:  And where we go from here with Michael Moore.

TRUMP:  I think we have to let Obamacare go its way for a while.

HAYES:  And another escalation in the Devin Nunes debacle when All In starts right now. 

TRUMP:  Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.

HAYES:  Good evening from Los Angeles, I`m Chris Hayes.  Obamacare is alive and Trumpcare is dead.  And the republican party with control of the White House and majorities in both the senate and the house of representatives is reeling tonight after failing to achieve what has been their single biggest goal for the past seven years and the number-one agenda item of Donald Trump`s presidency.  Minutes before it was due for a vote today, house republicans, led by Speaker Paul Ryan, pulled the bill that would have repealed and replaced the Affordable Care Act after it became obvious they lacked the votes within their own caucus.

Despite a pressure campaign by the White House and an ultimatum directly from the president himself at least 34 GOP members had come out against the bill, according to NBC news`s count.  And so after seven years and more than 60 republican house votes to repeal Obamacare, Speaker Ryan today called it the law of the land and acknowledged that governing is harder than it looks. 

RYAN:  Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains and, well, we`re feeling those growing pains today.  We came really close today.  But we came up short.  I will not sugar coat this, this is a disappointing day for us.  Doing big things is hard.  All of us, all of us, myself included, we will need time to reflect on how we got to this moment, what we could have done to do it better. 

HAYES:  The president, meanwhile, blamed the bill`s failure on -- wait for it -- democrats who wouldn`t join him in destroying Obamacare. 

TRUMP:  We had no democrat support.  We had no votes from the democrats.  They weren`t going to give us a single vote so it`s a very difficult thing to do.  I`ve been saying for the last year and a half that the best thing we can do politically speaking is let Obamacare explode.  I think the losers are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer because now they own Obamacare.  They own it, 100 percent own it.

HAYES:  But Obamacare is not actually exploding.  The CBO said so.  And speaking this afternoon, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was certainly not acting like someone who had just lost.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), MINORITY LEADER:  The unity of our house democratic members was a very important message to the country that we are very proud of the Affordable Care Act and the American people expressed their support for it.  That message became very clear to our colleagues on the republican side of the aisle.  Today is a great day for our country.  It`s a victory.  What happened on the floor is a victory for the American people. 

HAYES:  Not long after the bill was pulled, Democratic Congressman Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts told me he was very happy with the outcome. 

REP. JOE KENNEDY, D-MASSACHUSETTS:  The process worked.  And look, this is -- Chris, this is what happens when you have hundreds and thousands and millions of Americans who raise their voices and say don`t do something stupid, don`t vote on a bad bill, that was a bad bill.  We heard -- look, my office got thousands of calls over the course of the past couple days, and the fact is that doctors hated this bill, and patients hated this bill, and nurses hated this bill, and seniors hated this bill, and hospitals hated this bill.  It was a bad piece of legislation.  And the final -- look, I salute my republican colleagues for finally taking a chance to take a step back and listen to the voices that are being raised and to say we`re not going to vote on this because it`s a bad bill. 

HAYES:  What about, though -- I mean, so that clearly played a role but it also seems like the House Freedom Caucus, you know, once again was unmanageable.  I mean, this has been a situation which time after time after time, John Boehner before his successor Paul Ryan has tried to bring something in the floor and just cannot get the votes, they can`t deliver on their own majority. 

KENNEDY:  So, Chris, I -- obviously you`re 100 percent correct.  One would hope at some point though that republican leadership would take that lesson and say just as Speaker Boehner was forced to, recognize that if you can`t get that majority you come back and work with democrats to pass a bill, that is reflective of the broad needs of the -- of the country, democrats, republicans, urban districts, rural districts, rich, poor, black, white and everything else and the challenge on this one was that they shut democrats out of the process from the beginning and made a decision that they`re going pass a hard partisan bill that touches almost every single American at some point in your life.

So you need your health care system.  Not only is a $3 trillion a year industry but this is -- health care is about, as we discussed before, it`s about how we treat each other in our time of need.  Every single person out there at some point in their lives is dependent on the system.  So when you talk about making a drastic change to it without vetting it or discussing it, without people understanding what it`s going to mean for them, you get people really upset.  And they did.  This is no way to run a rodeo, it`s not way to actually govern and they learned that lesson. 

HAYES:  You`ve been very sober in this conversation, Congressman, so I want you to answer this honestly if possible.  Are you and the Caucus --see, no, I got you.  I broke you up.  Are you and the Caucus just -- are you and the Caucus just feeling amped?  Are you feeling kind of adrenaline of victory? 

KENNEDY:  Look, I think it -- undoubtedly at this point it feels pretty good.  But Chris, look, one, particularly in this business, victory is never final and defeat is never final, all right?  And the bottom line is as you pointed out a second ago, there are (INAUDIBLE) lot of people around the country that need their healthcare system to work better.  Even for those of us working pretty, you need it to work better and that`s got to be our commitment going forward.  Not saying politics about saying, hey, who won this round or the next one but trying to find a way to actually make this system work.

Because it is -- it touches us -- people ignore when you`re -- everything is going well but when it`s not you need it to be there for you.  And again, that`s why that they drafted this bill, republican leadership, it was -- it was a bad bill to begin with but try to find ways to actually strengthen the effective implementation of this law and you`ll actually take the politics out of healthcare which it never should have been in, to begin with.

HAYES:  All right.  Joe Kennedy III.  Pleasure.  Thanks.

KENNEDY:  Chris, thanks, pleasure.  Thank you. 

HAYES:  I`m joined on the phone by Congressman Leonard Lance, republican from New Jersey who was a no vote on the health care bill.  Congressman, are you -- are you happy they pulled the bill?  How are you feeling?

REP. LEONARD LANCE, R-NEW JERSEY:  That was a decision by leadership, Chris.  I think moving forward we have to do a better job.  I do think that the exchanges are a difficulty and I hope that we can work now together in a bipartisan capacity on this issue because I do think major reforms are necessary. 

HAYES:  So, Congressman, though, I just -- I want -- I really am curious in your reaction.  I mean, this is a wild 24 hours.  I have never -- I think I -- going back to the first tarp vote is the last time I saw something like this unfold on the house floor.  When you were told the bill was pulled, a bill that you were going to vote no on, did you -- what did you feel?  Did you feel relief?  Were you happy?  How did you feel? 

LANCE:  I was not happy.  I think that this is a time where we have to be reflective and I think that that was the tenor of Speaker Ryan`s comments.  And I`m willing to reach across the aisle to work with democratic colleagues and also colleagues in the -- in the senate in a bicameral phases because I do think that we have to reform the system and I`m concerned about the exchanges and about the fact that in rural America, as you know, Chris, in many places there`s only one insurer in the market.

HAYES:  Right.  So, Congressman, you had an interesting trajectory on this bill.  You represent a district that went for Hillary Clinton, you were originally a yes on this bill, you`ve come on my show to talk about it and defend it and then you were a no on the bill.  Can you walk me through what changed your mind?

LANCE:  Certainly.  In the commerce committee, I voted to make sure that there was no denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions, that people could stay on their parents` policies, no lifetime cap and making sure the expanded Medicaid was in place at least until 2020.  I was not on Ways and Means that dealt with the tax portions and I don`t think the refundable tax credit, Chris, were generous enough and I don`t think we found the funding for that.  And then the CBO score came out and I read it and I think that that was very challenging and a sobering analysis by CBO. 

HAYES:  You`ve also said that -- you`ve also said that the pressure in your district.  I mean, you got a lot of calls, you held town halls, to your great credit, unlike some of your colleagues.  I mean, people showing up their town halls, constituents telling you how this would affect them, how they felt about the bill, did that have an effect? 

LANCE:  I certainly tried to listen to all of my constituents.  As you know, I did the two town halls, one with 1400 residents, another with 900 and we`ve had lots of telephone calls and e-mails on this topic and most of them were against this bill and certainly I tried to listen to constituents.  You are accurate that Hillary Clinton carried the district by about 3500 votes.  I was pleased with my re-election margin last year but, Chris, in my judgment this year, 2017 should be a year of governance and let 2018 take care of itself.

HAYES:  So -- right.  So, speaking of 2018, you are now in a very select class of legislators which are members of congress who voted for the AHCA.  There`s not that many.  It`s just the republican members of the Commerce Committee and Ways and Means.  You now have -- you own this bill as far as your opponent is concerned, I`m sure.  Do you feel like you were hung out to dry by your leadership and the White House that made you vote for this in committee without a CBO score?  You`ve now got a bill that was so unpopular it couldn`t even get to a vote and you voted for it. 

LANCE:  Well, I voted for amendments in the commerce committee as I have described.  I did not vote for the amendments in the Ways and Means Committee and the bill itself was crafted by the budget committee.  The amendments in the Commerce Committee did as I had suggested, no denial of coverage, et cetera.  But I do think that we should work together moving forward to try to improve the system and I think the system needs improvement. 

HAYES:  All right, Congressman Leonard Lance, thank you.  Enjoy your weekend in your district. 

LANCE:  Thank you, you as well, Chris.  It`s always a pleasure to be with you. 

HAYES:  All right.  I`m joined now by Congresswoman Karen Bass, Democrat from California.  Have you ever seen -- you`re smiling.  Have you ever seen anything like this? 

REP. KAREN BASS, D-CALIFORNIA:  Well, actually, I mean, we did a few times before, right?  Over the debt ceiling, you know, over the budget.  There were several times.  But I think that this was just a real mess and I was actually surprised, frankly, that Paul Ryan miscalculated so much because he knew the challenges of the Freedom Caucus but I am so glad and I just want to take a second and give a shoutout to all the people in indivisible that went to town hall meetings, all the resistance fighters because this was an important lesson to understand that your activism, your participation counts and I hope they celebrate, rest for the weekend and be prepared to continue fighting on Monday.

HAYES:  I want to read you a pretty remarkable quote by Republican Congressman Tom Rooney of Florida.  He said the following.  I`ve been in this job eight years and I`m wracking my brain to think of one thing our party has done that`s been something positive, that`s been something other than stopping something else from happening.  We need to start having victories as a party, and if we can`t, then it`s hard to justify why we should be back here.  Harsh?  Fair? 

BASS:  Well, I actually think it`s very accurate.  I mean, I`m in my seventh year and when I first came here, Chris, you know, the motto was, you know, repeal and replace and I was waiting for a replacement for seven years.  Obviously, they couldn`t get to it but they were so obsessed with that rhetoric and I think they weren`t planning on governing.  I think that they believed like we all did that they were going to be dealing with President Clinton instead of President Trump.

HAYES:  Right.

BASS:  And so I think they were caught off guard and they were caught off guard and they were left with OK, now in charge, we have no excuse but we`re getting ready to see this again over tax reform because if Trump thought this was difficult, wait until he comes to tax reform.  And I think we need to be on our guard because another way for them to come at healthcare is by cutting some of the taxes that pay for the healthcare coverage.  So I think it was a huge victory.  I`m very excited about it, on the other hand, I don`t think we can let our guard down.  There`s other battles ahead. 

HAYES:  I`m having a hard time figuring out which of the two scenarios is correct.  I can`t tell if the republican leadership were essentially fooling their voters all this time when they were voting time after time to repeal Obamacare, 60 times and they can`t do it once when they have control, or whether they fooled themselves.  If they -- if they essentially believed all of their own rhetoric.

BASS:  Well, but see, I do think they used it politically because if they believed all their own rhetoric then please tell me why I`ve been here for seven years and have never seen a replacement?  You know that I voted over 65 times against the repeal.  You would have thought I would have voted 65 times for or against a replacement.  When they had the opportunity to do a replacement they couldn`t get it together.

So I do think it was political.  I think it was political rhetoric to gin up, you know, their base and I think it was really sad because it misled an awful lot of people.  So some of the problems with Obamacare is the fact that many states have not extended Medicaid and so we do need to come back and maybe now, maybe now they will look at making improvements because no democrat ever said that this was perfect, that there weren`t room -- there wasn`t room to improve.

Maybe they`ll come back to the table but it was fascinating to listen to Trump try to blame this on democrats.  It`s like I`m not sure if he forgot the math or he was just, you know, once again lying.  They did not need one democratic vote to pass this bill if they had gotten it together and they didn`t. 

HAYES:  Right.  44-seat majority, largest republican majority since 1928.  Congresswoman Karen Bass, thank you for being here tonight.

BASS:  Thanks for having me on. 

HAYES:  Still to come, according to President Trump, democrats as the Congresswoman just said, are the real losers in the failed republican healthcare debacle.  Senator Bernie Sanders is here to respond ahead.  Plus Michael Moore on today`s victory for grass-roots organizing and where the resistance goes from here.  He joins me after this two-minute break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK

TRUMP:  We`re going to repeal and replace Obamacare.  If we don`t act quickly, the damage will be irreversible.  We`re going to have it terminated.  We`re going to have great healthcare.  So we`re going to repeal and replace.  Obamacare which we`re going to repeal and we`re going replace with something much better.  It will be repeal and replace.  It will be essentially simultaneously.  Most likely be on the same day or the same week but probably the same day, could be the same hour.  Real change begins with immediately repealing and replacing the disaster known as Obamacare.

HAYES:  Today rhetoric met reality for President Trump and the republican party as a whole, a culmination of seven years` worth of calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act.  Joining me now, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and activist Michael Moore.  Michael, your reaction to what happened today.

MICHAEL MOORE, ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER AND ACTIVIST:  Well, immediately the good news is that the millions of people who are beneficiaries of Obamacare are not going to be thrown out on the curb tonight or tomorrow night or anytime soon.  So that`s great news.  Everybody should feel good about that.  But this is not the time for the democrats to gloat or throw some kind of party.  You know, like they`re really good at throwing these early parties like yay, we won. 

Wait a minute, we didn`t?  This is -- this is -- this the time we have to now double down because when -- please understand that Trump is telling you the truth when he says that Obamacare is going to explode or implode depending on which side of his brain he`s listening to.  It will do one of those things because they are going to actively make sure that that happens.  They and the profit-making insurance companies are going to make sure that it explodes.  So that means the resistance -- yes.

HAYES:  This is a worrisome scenario, right?  The sort of death by sabotage because you now have Tom Price who is probably one of the most committed foes of Obamacare who exists, who`s running HHS which has a lot of latitude and you`ve got this situation where -- and you can tell, it`s almost -- I have to say, it`s very bizarre and almost chilling to hear the president sort of talk about how it`s politically beneficial for him if the healthcare system explodes in the country that he`s representing.  Is that -- I guess that`s your concern and how you mobilize to make sure that doesn`t happen. 

MOORE:  OK.  Here`s how we mobilize.  First of all, we need to really make sure because this happened very fast in the last 24 hours. Trump and Speaker Ryan change the bill in the 11th hour to try and get more of the tea party republicans to vote for it.  They made the bill meaner.  In the last day here, the vote that was actually going to be taken was going to be taken on a bill that said that insurance companies are no longer required and that means not just Obamacare now, that means everybody watching this, all insurance companies were now -- there it is on the screen, not going to have to provide these services even for people who have health insurance.

So no outpatient care, no emergency, no emergency -- no E.R. visits, no -- don`t get pregnant, we`re not covering that, we don`t have to by law anymore, they don`t have to cover any of these 10 things, they put this in the bill to sweeten it for the hateful tea party people and they still couldn`t get enough republicans even by saying we`ll cut out the E.R. visits, we`ll cut out the maternity and the pediatric stuff. How about that?

No, no.  We won`t vote for it.  So please understand that the republicans and especially I`m talking out to the people in Michigan who voted for Trump, especially those of you who voted for Obama and then changed and voted for Trump, these people are out to make your lives a living hell and they tried to do in the last 24 hours in a way that hasn`t really been reported on much but you should go online and look this up on what they really were going to vote on today and they couldn`t get enough republicans to vote for this hateful mean-spirited bill.

So now the resistance has to step forward.  We need to do two things, Chris.  Number one, we need to push for single payer insurance, Medicare for all, the kind the Canadians have, the kind that every other civilized democracy on the planet has.  We have to push for this because we do need to fix these parts of Obamacare that did cost us votes in November.  This has to be fixed.  Do not sit around and say, oh, we`ve got our Obamacare.  Democrats, you have to get this fixed.  But the people who are watching, the people who are members of the resistance, and that we`re talking tens of millions of people now.

We have to shift part of our focus away from congress who we have been barraging for the last two months with phone calls, visits, letters.  We have to -- we have to go after the insurance companies because these private profit-making insurance companies are going to do everything in their power to do what Trump said it`s going to happen.  They`re going to try to explode or implode Obamacare. 

HAYES:  So here`s a question about the political lesson because you and I spoke -- I think it was the day after the election and there was a great feeling of -- people were stunned I think in the broad center, left people were upset and confused and angry, you know, one of the things I kept thinking about was how quickly tables had turned in just the last, you know, 8 or 10 years that I`ve been really covering politics between 2004 and 2006 and then 2008 and then, you know, 1010.  What is the political lesson here that you are taking away from what happens in the last 24, 48 hours? 

MOORE:  A couple lessons, number one, everything that people did to have their voice heard had a huge impact.  It made the republicans scared and mostly it made them confused and they really couldn`t find their tail as much as they were chasing it.  That is because the majority of Americans, that I`m part of, didn`t vote for this man, didn`t elect him and the majority is still out there.  The majority did not want this.  By the time of last night, Chris, the last poll that showed that only 17 percent of the American public liked the republican healthcare plan, 17 -- they`re down to 17 percent.

So huge, huge movement there.  A lot of people, you saw this in West Virginia when you went there with Bernie, you know, people are getting it.  They`re getting that they were lied to.  They were -- they were held out -- a lot of promises were held out to them that aren`t going to come through and they saw just how transparent the republicans and Trump were with this bill.  This was -- this was a tax cut bill for the rich, not a healthcare bill.  This was an attempt now to try and kill Obamacare in actually more cruel ways because they`re going to try to nip and tuck and cut there at HHS.

They`re going do everything they can to stymie and get in the way of the good that Obamacare does.  That`s why Bernie and the other progressive leaders of this party who I believe now represent the majority of this party, have to get out there and push for the real fix.  If we don`t fix Obamacare in the way it should be fixed, in the way I think President Obama probably would agree, it should be fixed, we are going to get hit really hard and the people that we say that we support, the people -- the working poor, the people that are the working class of this country, they are going to suffer mightily.  Even though we stay we still have Obamacare, they are going to raise those premiums.  They are going to try and not cover things.

HAYES:  So, that may be true in terms of staking a position, right?  But the notion that -- first of all, it seems to me that there is going to be zero appetite on Capitol Hill among the republican leadership that is controlling the legislative schedule at this point to do anything having to do with healthcare in the near future having just put their hand on a stove and come away with burns so bad, they`re essentially in the E.R.  You know, in terms -- you`re talking about essentially advocating a principle because there`s going to be a big fight on tax reform and there`s going to be -- it`s hard for me to imagine that being anything of a legislative reality. 

MOORE:  Well, that`s why we have to do what they did for seven years under -- throughout all of the Obama -- both of his terms.  They have to -- we have to -- the democrats have to -- as they did 50 or 60 times, put forth their repeal Obamacare bills, we have to just start going in there right now with Medicare for all, single-payer and keep every time after time after time --

HAYES:  Wait, but Michael that was a disaster. 

MOORE:  And then we have to get rid of the republicans next year. 

HAYES:  Wait a second, Michael.  What they did was -- if that`s the model, what they did was they sold people a bill of goods, they voted 60 times knowing it couldn`t happen and then when the time came they couldn`t actually implement it.  That seems a crazy model (INAUDIBLE) 0:02:17.5

MOORE:  No, no, no.  Well, not -- we don`t -- well, there`s one significant difference between the two models.  We know what we`re doing and we mean it and actually, we`re kind of smart.  You know, we actually represent the majority of the country that doesn`t believe the earth is 6,000 years old.  OK?  So we the people who understand these things, we are the majority, we are going to go in there and start fighting for these things and, yes, we`re going to get -- we`re going to lose, we`re going to lose votes but when it comes our time and it will come our time, trust me on this, it will come our time and we won`t do what they did today.

We will be ready with the right bill that Americans are going to love.  Free healthcare paid for by the people who should be paying for it, the wealthy, the corporations, the people that can afford this who have been living high on the hog for these last couple of decades.  It`s time they`re going to pay their fair share once we are back in power, we will be in power, we are the majority.  We had a blip here, that`s all this is.

HAYES:  I think -- I think what I`m hearing and I`m curious to see if this happens today, I saw Elizabeth Warren talking about this today, if in the wake of this what you end up seeing is single payer as an emerging democratic party consensus on the path forward. 

MOORE:  And quickly also states can do this now.  California, New York, blue states can push for their own statewide single payer Medicare for all programs, show the rest of the country how this can be done.  California and New York, you did it with Roe v. Wade three years before abortion was made legal.  It was legal in New York and California.  That`s one of the reasons we got Roe v. Wade.  Do it now with single payer healthcare.  Thank you, Chris. 

HAYES:  Gavin Newsom here in California is actually running on that for -- as he --

(CROSSTALK) 

MOORE:  Reasons of resistance, blue states. 

HAYES:  A big enough -- a big enough risk will -- Michael Moore, thank you for joining me tonight. 

MOORE:  All right.  Thanks, Chris. 

HAYES:  Still to come, Congressman Schiff on what he calls the dead-of- night excursions of his intelligence committee colleague Devin Nunes that threaten the integrity of their investigation into possible Trump-Russia ties.  More on that after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

 

 

 

HAYES:  Today, the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, Congressman Adam Schiff, offered a stark accusation that President Trump`s determination to stand by his unfounded claims that his predecessor had him wiretapped has now led President Trump to interfere with the work of the House intelligence committee and its Republican chair.

(BEGINVIDEO CLIP)

SCHIFF:  But now I think in an effort to further justify the unjustifiable, he`s now interfering in this investigation and I think the fact that the chairman`s press conference was at the White House is not only symbolically important, it`s important in terms of understanding what`s going on here.

So that effort to defend the indefensible has led us down this terrible rabbit hole and threatens the integrity of the only investigation that`s authorized in the house.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  Congressusman Eric Swalwell of the House intelligence committee and whether that committee is falling apart, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIFF:  I think that there must have been a very strong push back from the White House about the nature of Monday`s hearing.  It`s hard for me to come to a conclusion about why an agreed-upon hearing would be suddenly canceled.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  Congressman Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House intelligence committee making the extraordinary claim today the committee`s Chairman Devin Nunes canceled a scheduled hearing next week after pushback from the White House, a tweet-length version of Congressman Schiff`s stark accusation, equally eye-opening.  He tweeted this -- "breaking, chairman just canceled open intelligence committee hearing with Clapper, Brennan and Yates in an attempt to choke off public info."

Schiff also reiterated the need for an independent commission, although he said he still hoped to work with the intelligence committee.

Bear in mind that it was Chairman Nunes who made the bizarre choice to personally go to President Trump earlier this week with word the intelligence community had incidentally collected information on people in the Trump transition.  And Chairman Nunes would not deny to reporters that the source of that very information was the White House itself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did this come from the White House?  Did this information...

REP. DAVID NUNES, (R) CALIFORNIA:  As you know, we have to keep our sources and methods here very, very quiet.

UNIDNETIFIED MALE:  You`re denying any of this information came from the Trump administration?

NUNES:  Yeah, I`m not going to -- look, on this -- at this committee we are not going to every reveal sources.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  Earlier, I spoke with Congressman Eric Swalwell, a member of the House intelligence committee, and I asked him if his committee was coming unglued.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. ERIC SWALWELL, (D) CALIFORNIA:  Well, Chris, for the past few months we`ve been going down this investigative road together as Republicans and Democrats.  We made some progress on Monday with an open hearing where the FBI director confirmed that there was and is an investigation into the criminal and counterintelligence ties between Donald Trump and his team with Russia.

But just earlier this week, Devin Nunes, our chair, exited that road and now he has gone toward the White House and seems to be doing their bidding.

What`s concerning for us is he took evidence to them without coming to us.  He went to the president whose campaign is under investigation and he still refuses to show us the evidence.

So he needs to find an on-ramp back on to this investigation, because we`re going to continue and go forward.

HAYES:  Well, I mean, respectfully, it seems like there`s not an on-ramp back on after you`ve done that.   I mean, in terms of the integrity...

SWALWELL:  Maybe not for him.

HAYES:  But even for the committee?

I guess my question to you is it becomes more -- the further we go down this path, and I want to get to Chairman Nunes in a second, but the further we go down this path as I watch this unfold myself it seems to me that I`m not quite clear that this committee that you have is the proper investigative body or is equipped, frankly, to undertake what is essentially a kind of law enforcement investigation if, in fact, we`re talking about crimes being committed.

SWALWEWLL:  And, Chris, I long believed that.  That`s why I, back in December, Elijah Cummings and I wrote a bill calling for an independent investigation.  Every Democrat supports that as well as one Republican, Walter Jones.  And so we always saw that as the most comprehensive way to understand what happened and how to make sure it never happens again, but right now it`s also an insurance policy against an investigation that our chairman has compromised.

HAYES:  So in terms of your chairman, can you make sense of what he is doing?  He seems to me in every public appearance -- I`m not sure how to describe it charitably, but that he`s not calling the shots, that he is not driving the car.

SWALWELL:  Chris, what`s so disappointing is we have worked so well with him in the past.  We passed the cyber security bill together.  We keep authorizing intelligence programs together and those were his best days.  This past week has been among his worst.

And so I don`t know what to do next with him because it seems that he wants to still be a part of the Trump transition team rather than to show the independence and collaboration that we need to do on this committee so that the American people understand that we`re never going to let this happen again.

HAYES:  Were you notified in any way about canceling the committee hearing with Clapper and Brennan and Yates that was to be in an open hearing?  Were you notified?  Were Democratic staff notified?

SWALWELL:  He went to the press first.  We knew they were trying to do what they could to get out of that hearing or maybe put it in a secret setting, but without really having any details about it, he went out to the press and held another press conference.

And so that`s just really concerning because this committee has always worked collaboratively.  Actually, it`s one of the most fulfilling parts about being on this committee is that we work in secret usually.  We get the job done because we know when it comes to national security that`s where it counts, but right now the chairman it appears wants to be more loyal to the president than to our duties on the committee.

HAYES:  There was a moment that I have watched numerous times now that I still can`t quite get over.  In which the chairman was asked directly if his source, as he refers to it, his source for the notion that there was some incidental collection of people associated with the Trump campaign and possibly the president and surveillance, whether his source for that was the White House itself.  He would not deny that was the case.

Do you think it`s possible that that is the case, that the White House is the source and this whole thing is an information laundering scheme?

SWALWELL:  It`s certainly possible, and it`s actually one of the only possibilities, because from what we have been able to gather, he did not receive that information in our secured facility at the capitol.  So that leaves it to just the National Security Agency and the CIA.  And from what we`re hearing, they did not provide that to him either, so that means he either went to a non-secure location to receive this information or he received it at the White House.

And so we want to get to the bottom of that.  We also want to know why did Speaker Ryan authorize this?  Again, we`re supposed to be an independent branch of government that is looking at a president whose campaign is under investigation.  Why would he allow Chairman Nunes to go to the White House and perform this stunt?

HAYES:  All right, Congressman Eric Swalwell of California, thank you for your time.

SWALWELL:  My pleasure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYES:  Still to come, Senator Bernie Sanders on this early defeat in the Trump administration and the Republican failure to fulfill a years` long promise.

Plus, some shade from the Obama White House in tonight`s Thing One, Thing Two after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES:  Thing One tonight, on the scale of legislative achievements, today was the polar opposite of, say, seven years and one day ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, FRM. VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: President Obama did not comment on the failure of the Ryan/Trump repeal and replace bill today, but one member of the Obama White House weighed in to throw some shade, and that`s Thing Two in 60 seconds.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES:  For both of Barack Obama`s presidential terms, Pete Souza was the official White House photographer documenting all eight years of the Obama administration.  Souza was also Ronald Reagan`s White House photographer for six years, taking photos like this before his second inaugural address.

Throughout the Obama White House Souza posted photos on his Instagram account, but lately he`s been digging through his archives and started throwing shade, actually a lot of shade.

For instance, after President Trump first signed the travel ban, Souza posted this photo captioned "talking with a young refugee.

After the Trump advisers reportedly had trouble finding the lights in the cabinet room, he posted this captioned "those damn lights."

And ahead of Trump`s announcement of his Supreme Court nominee, this photo writing "Merrick Garland, just saying."

But Souza`s post today may have particularly stung with the caption "before voting on the Affordable Care Act in 2010, President Obama met with many members of congress on both sides of the aisle over the course of many months.  This picture was taken at the end of a multiple hours-long meeting with the entire Republican House caucus in which he responded to dozens of questions and critiques.  It was carried live on cable TV."

  (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Vote for this bill, let`s send it to the other body and continue to work to improvement it.  It`s a good bill.  Please vote yes.

REP. FRANK PALLONE, (D) MARYLAND:  In Mr. Barton`s case, his vote for this bill will result in 64,900 people from his congressional district in Texas losing health coverage and care.

UNIDENITIFIED MALE:  I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill.  And with that I yield back.

PALLONE:  I remind my colleague from Mississippi that his vote for this bill will result in 69,600 people from his congressional district losing health coverage and care.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I urge all my colleagues to do the right thing and vote for this bill and I yield back.

PALLONE:  I remind my colleague from Indiana that his vote for this bill will result in 37,800 people from his congressional district losing health coverage and care.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Those constituents are getting their freedom back to choose whether or not they want health care coverage and what kind of health care coverage they want.  I say vote yes.

PALLONE:  I remind my colleague from Texas that his vote for this bill will result in 61,900 people from his congressional district losing health coverage and care.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES:  Democrat Frank Pallone was taking names on the floor of the House today, and you can`t argue with the strategy of reminding Republicans how many of their constituents would have been affected by this bill.

But just stopping Ryan and Trump from blowing up Obamacare is not enough for my next guest, I`m guessing.  Senator Bernie Sanders from the great state of Vermont joins me now.

Senator, first, your colleagues in the Senate, the Republican colleagues, I talked to some folks on the Hill who said behind closed doors they were - they did not want this bill coming into your chamber.

Do you think that`s right?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I) VERMONT: I think some of them may have felt that way, other people, certainly Mitch McConnell, has been pushing very, very hard to repeal Obamacare.

But I think Chris at the end of the day, I know media will focus on the winners and the losers and Trump and Ryan and that stuff,  that`s not what the American people care about.

The fact of the matter is is that today was an extraordinarily important win for working families all over this country who understood that this so- called health care bill was not a health care bill, it was a $300 billion tax break for the top 2 percent and hundreds of billions more in tax breaks for the drug companies and the insurance companies.

And what the American people said in town meeting after town meeting where they flooded those meetings, they told their Republican representatives, you know what, you`re not going to triple my premiums just because I`m old.  You`re not going to throw me off of my Medicaid.

And I think what you saw is a wising up of the American people.  And it was a very important day and a very important victory.

HAYES:  You know, I couldn`t help but think today about -- thinking back to the election, an election you ran in, and the woman you ran against in the primary and then endorsed in the general in which -- I read this account of Donald Trump talking about the bill and asking his advisers "is it really such a good bill?"  Because he had no command whatsoever and apparently no curiosity to learn what was in the bill. 

I wonder what you think about the ways in which people looked at Hillary Clinton and thought, yeah, maybe she knows details, but it doesn`t inspire me and the importance of actually knowing what you`re talking about when you`re trying to pass legislation.

SANDERS:  Well, obviously, needless to say, one would think when you run for president of the United States as Trump successfully did, that you might and want to know something about some of the most important issues facing this country like health care, you might think that would be the case.

You`ll remember a month ago Trump said, boy, this health care thing is complicated.  Well, no kidding, it really is. 

But I think the problem is that while Obamacare has, in fact, made -- done some good things, 20 million more people have health insurance, we have ended this disaster of so-called pre-existing conditions, young people can get health insurance through their parents, there`s a limit to how much people have to pay if they have a serious illness. 

What we should also and must understand, Chris, is this is far, far, far, from perfect legislation. And in my view, as you`ve heard me say many, many times, I am talking to you right now about an hour away from the Canadian border.  Somehow or another they manage to provide health care for every man, woman, and child in their country at about half the cost per person than we do.  Somehow the cost of prescription drugs in Canada are a fraction of what it is in the United States.

We have got to have the guts to take on the insurance companies and the drug companies and move forward to a Medicare for all single payer program.  And I`ll introducing legislation shortly to do that.

HAYES:  One of the things that struck me about this debate was the role that Medicaid played in it.  And Medicaid is a benefit that I think it was very easy for many years for politicians to sort of say that it was some other people, right?  It was a program for the poor.  And a combination of a variety of factors, including Medicaid expansion, you saw how central and kind of inviolable Medicaid has become.  It`s almost ascended to sort of the same status as Medicare and Social Security.

I feel like that`s a new political reality and represent a pretty seismic shift.

SANDERS:  Well, here`s what you got.  You`ve got a couple things.  For a start, I`m sure you know about two-thirds of Medicaid spending got to nursing home care.  So, you`ve got a lot of middle-class families right now whose mom or dad is in a nursing home and guess what, Medicaid is paying for that.  And I think we did a pretty good job of making people realize that.

And also you have states like Kentucky, West Virginia, many other states where the rate of the uninsured went way, way down, hundreds of thousands of people finally got insurance.  And you know what?  They don`t want to lose that insurance.

So what our job was and what we have got to continue to do is to bring people together in understanding that Trump lied to them when he said he was going to defend the rights of working people.  In fact, what he is doing is defending Wall Street, the insurance companies, and the drug companies.

Our job now is to not only defeat these right-wing extremists proposals, it`s to bring people together around a progressive agenda -- creating jobs, raising the minimum wage, moving toward a health care for all single payer program.

HAYES:  So they`re now talking about -- the president almost seemed in a bizarre way relieved.   I mean, he was talking for several weeks about how he really didn`t want to do this and he was going to be happy to have it over with.  And then today he seemed sort of, in his own way, kind of nonplussed by the whole thing. 

They`re talking now about a bit tax reform -- and I put reform in quotes -- package.  What do you think about that as the next agenda item?  Because in some ways losing your health care seems more tangible but in other ways, it seems like I don`t think the American people voted for a mandate for lowering the corporate tax rate.

SANDERS:  Right.

But you`re right in saying it`s one thing to be talking about esoteric issues like corporate tax rates, it`s another thing to take people`s health insurance away.  So, that have in a sense is an easier fight.

But with this so-called tax reform fight, is about is, of course, giving huge tax breaks to billionaires like Donald Trump.  They want to repeal the estate tax, which applies only to the top two-tenths of 1 percent.  They want to give massive tax breaks to corporations, although we have major corporations today making billions of profits who already don`t pay a nickel in federal income tax.

So, tax reform is an important issue.  And when you have massive levels of income and wealth inequality, very, very rich are getting much richer while the middle-class shrinks.  What we have got to demand is the wealthiest people and largest corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. 

And that`s the effort that I hope we can bring people together around.

HAYES:  Yeah, it`s going to be - that battle is going to be a fascinating one in a completely different way.  And you also wonder whether defeat begets defeat and people start to smell blood that it`s a sort of political reality.

Senator, Bernie Sanders...

SANDERS:  Well, that`s right, Chris.

Let`s -- today`s victory was important in terms of health care, but it is also important is that we have taken on the right wing extremist agenda.  We beat them today and we`ve got to keep betting them and we have got to go proactive with the progressive agenda.

HAYES:  Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you for joining me on this Friday.  Enjoy your weekend.

I want to say thank you to everyone that has come out to say hi on my book tour for my new book A Colony in a Nation, which you can buy now.  Tonight, you can catch me on Real Time with Bill Maher.  In fact, you might be wondering to yourself where is Chris tonight?  And I will tell you, I`m in the parking in Los Angeles lot outside Bill Maher`s show because we want to do a live show with all this breaking news, but then I have to be on that show.  So that explains why I am here. 

I`m going to have more events in Los Angeles this weekend, actually.  If you`re in the area, you should swing by.

And for a full list of the events, where they are, the times, you can check out our Facebook page, all the information right there. 

That does it for us.  That is "ALL IN" for this evening. 

THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW starts right now. 

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END