This is a rush transcript from "Sunday Morning Futures," July 23, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS CHANNEL ANCHOR: Good morning. A new senior adviser is now in-charge of messaging at the White House ahead of an important week for the President and his agenda. Good morning everyone, I'm Maria Bartiromo. Thanks for joining me. This is SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES. Anthony ScaramuccI now at the helm of President Trump's communication teams. Former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and House Speaker Newt Gingrich on what to expect in the coming days, coming up, live, both of them. Plus, will an ObamaCare repeal bill get to the Senate floor this week? It is a big week, will it have enough votes? Senator Paul Rand already a no vote and Senator James Lankford join me, coming up. And Senior White House Adviser Jared Kushner set to meet behind closed doors with two committees this upcoming week to face questions about the Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia as questions remain on whether two other key players will appear at all. We're looking ahead right now on SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES.
And the White House is ready to hit the ground running next week with a new Commander at the helm of the Communications Team. It comes after a sudden shake up in the west wing. Sean Spicer announcing his resignation on Friday as the President's Press Secretary. The job now falls to his former Deputy Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Financier Anthony ScaramuccI is coming on board as the White House Communications Director, a position that will put him in charge of crafting the messages and strategy for the entire communications operation. Joining me now is Newt Gingrich, he is former Speaker of the House, author of the New York Times best-selling book Understanding Trump and also a Fox News Contributor. Mr. Speaker, good to have you. Thanks very much for being here.
NEWT GINGRICH, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR AND FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: It's good - it's good to be with you.
BARTIROMO: Your reaction to Anthony ScaramuccI and the job? How does this change things for the White House?
GINGRICH: Well, first of all, I think he's a great choice because the president likes him and trusts him and the chemistry will be very very good. Scaramucci's very smart, he also is very clever. I think he'll be a fighter, but he won't be hostile. I think he will be friendly with the press but also be very direct and very tough in taking on things that he thinks are false allegations or things that he thinks are just plain inaccurate. I also think promoting Sarah Huckabee was really a good idea. She has done a great job. She has a - her personality is going to wear very well with the American people. And the combination of the two them may turn out to be very, very effective duo in hammering home the President's strategy. Remember, this President will be in a war with the elite establishment for every single day of his - of his two terms. So for eight years, they're going to be in a fight and they just need to relax and have people like ScaramuccI who are comfortable fighting and then people like Sarah who are very good at making the press feel comfortable, while she calmly and pleasantly disagrees with them.
BARTIROMO: Yes, I think you make a great point. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has done a very good job. She deserves that promotion. And as far as Scaramucci, I think one take away that I had was the fact that he believes in the agenda, Newt. He actually understands that lower taxes, smaller government, lower regulations, will impact economic growth so he's going to make that a priority.
GINGRICH: Well, and you had him on your show many, many times.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
GINGRICH: So you know what an engaging personality he is, how much energy he has. And I think frankly if you are going to be one of the folks who is a shield bearer for Donald Trump, you had better have a ton of energy because you are trying to keep up with somebody who's a whirlwind and who's fairly unpredictable. So, I'm looking forward to seeing Scaramucci in this job and I think it will be - I think he'll probably do a really good job particularly because the next big phase is going to be tax cuts, economic growth, things he knows so well that he will be able to I think dominate the news media on those kinds of topics pretty decisively.
BARTIROMO: Right in terms of setting the tone on what's important. And to that end, you have come up with a white paper here, Republican mid-course correction. Let's talk about that because you're saying the White House, the House, the Senate Republicans need to jointly assess their team's first six months.
GINGRICH: Sure.
BARTIROMO: Where are we? Tell us about it.
GINGRICH: I mean, I think it's being like a football game, it's halftime. As I have said to several Republican Leaders, do you really want to repeat the last six months? Everyone has said to me no. Well, if you don't want to repeat it, you got to change. And I think the first big change is to really emphasize by Thanksgiving, having a tax cut bill signed into law which means it has to be fairly simple, fairly straightforward. I think to drop tax reform as a goal, go to tax cut as a goal, recognize it. If we don't have economic growth in the first and second quarter of next year, that proves we're the party of jobs and prosperity and take-home pay, we could lose the House and be faced with Speaker Pelosi for the last two years of this term. I think that would be a disaster of such proportions. Yet every Republican, White House, Senate, House, ought to focus in on make August jobs and take-home pay and economic growth month. Get the bill through the House in September, Get it through the Senate in October, get the bill signed by Thanksgiving. It gives Republicans something to talk about, hold town hall meetings on jobs, economic growth, and take-home pay. If the left wants to come, let them. The last president had the weakest eight years in modern history. Weaker meaning, what's worse than the great depression in terms of economic growth? And it is astonishing. Obama's best year was slower than Bill Clinton's worst year. Now, that's astonishing and we just need to draw the contrast and say look, those of you who want to talk about Russia, feel free. We want to talk about jobs, take-home pay, economic growth because they are the key to America's future.
BARTIROMO: Yes, that's why the communications and the messaging is so important, and that's where Anthony Scaramucci comes in. He's going to make sure that that is front and center in terms of the agenda and not the noise that are all of these hearings in terms of Russia. By the way, why aren't there more hearings on tax reform, Newt? How come - I mean there was a hearing on subcommittee out of the House Ways and Means Committee last week did a hearing on simplicity, but how come we're seeing so many testimonies on Russia and no testimonies on repeal and replace, no explanation on tax reform, on tax cuts?
GINGRICH: Well, look, I think it is a mistake. And I mean, I do think the Ways and Means Committee has had a lot of hearings but one of the great problems Republicans have is a passion for being boring. I mean, the - again, Scaramucci clearly is not a guy who believes in being boring so I think he will liven it up. But we should be talking about economic growth, we should be talking about jobs, we should - we should get the tax rate down to 15 percent for business including a pass-through for small businesses. We ought to have a very substantial middle-class tax cut, probably by doubling the deduction. We ought to get the money back from overseas with repatriation. There's three or four simple things we could do. And if you went home and you said to people, you want to say you met with your local small businesses and said, if you were - if you were at 15 percent business tax, what would you do? How much better off would you be?
BARTIROMO: Right.
GINGRICH: You know, you would suddenly have people getting excited about something in Washington and you'd have positive pressure on Congress including the Democrats. I mean, let the Democrats go home and explain why they want you to pay higher taxes, have fewer jobs, have less take-home pay. I think a lot of Democrats will break under that kind of pressure.
BARTIROMO: Yes, and in your notes, you say based on the successes of 1981 to 1988 and then 1994 to 1997, some key principles for success stand out. One of them is if you develop effective communications about popular policies, we should be able to build big enough social communities of support to both reinforce members and to add pressure to the Democrats. But what do you do when you've got these Senate leaders basically saying no we're not going to vote, getting in front of, getting in the way of any legislative victory?
GINGRICH: Well, I think, first of all, on the - on the Republican side, I think you can shape a tax cut bill that every Republican Senator can be for.
BARTIROMO: Right.
GINGRICH: I mean, this is why I always wanted them to start with taxes and infrastructure because you can build a huge bipartisan majority.
BARTIROMO: Right.
GINGRICH: You know, Reagan - but what it requires is every cabinet officer should be assigned speeches in August when jobs and economic growth and take-home pay. The President I think ought to give an Oval Office address for the first time.
BARTIROMO: We got - we got to jump, Newt. Great to see you Sir, thank you very much. Senate Republicans are expecting a vote to come to the floor to repeal ObamaCare this week. We will talk with Senator Rand Paul next.
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BARTIROMO: Welcome back. The Senate hoping to get a vote to repeal ObamaCare to the floor this week possibly Tuesday, Wednesday. There are two options on the table. The first is outright repeal of ObamaCare, the other is a revised version of the Senate's repeal and replace plan, which of course did not get enough votes in the last attempt to bring it to the floor. Joining us right now is Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, a Member of the Senate Health Committee. And it is good to see you, Senator. Thank you very much for joining us.
SEN. RAND PAUL, R-K.Y., SENATE HEALTH COMMITTEE: Good morning.
BARTIROMO: Well, you were a no in that last plan. Will you vote for a clean repeal this week?
PAUL: Well, I think that's the real question. What are we going to be voting on? Last week we were told it would be the 2015 bill which is a clean repeal. It's still a partial repeal. I wish we could repeal the whole thing but they're going to present us with either a partial repeal or the Senate Republican leadership plan which I think does not repeal ObamaCare, but really is a pork fest full of all kinds of government programs and government spending. In fact, I think it's become the kitchen sink. They're throwing money in for anybody they think they can buy off to get on the bill. But what I'm pushing for and what I have told them is I will vote to go to the bill, meaning begin a debate on ObamaCare. I will go to that if they promise that the first vote will be a clean repeal because that's what we promised the American people.
BARTIROMO: But what happens then, Senator? I mean, let's say you vote - you all vote for a repeal, you repeal it, and then there's this transition period. What happens to those people who are relying on ObamaCare?
PAUL: Well, one of the things that I've been proposing that I think could help not only those on ObamaCare but there's also 27 million people on ObamaCare that don't have any insurance. Most of those people or about half they say don't get the insurance because it's too expensive. They don't have the money to get it. So, if you let people join associations, I think you can dramatically bring down the prices. There was a story out just the other day on what is going on with China, with drug prices and using the leverage of large groups to buy drugs, you can get extraordinary savings. I think we can get extraordinary savings in health insurance if we let people band together so you don't have to buy mom and pop by yourself, you join a big association to get your insurance. That is one way I think we could help people get insurance in that interim period and really on going.
BARTIROMO: Is there something - is this - is this the kind of arrangement that could create a change or a new amendment to the old bill that you were a no to? I mean, I'm just trying to understand if there's anything that can happen, that can change from the old bill. And I understand what you are saying, I mean, the taxes are still in there, the subsidies are still in there. It does look like ObamaCare light. But is there something that can be changed that would get you to a yes? For example, your colleague Ted Cruz, he was a no but he comes up with his own amendment to make it a little more competitive for the states and then he turns to a yes. Here's what Ted Cruz told me on this Friday, I want to get your take on it. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TED CRUZ, R-TEXAS: What it says is that you the consumer should have a right to choose what healthcare you want to buy. If you want to buy a plan with all the federal mandates from ObamaCare, you should be able to buy that. Those plans will still be on the market. But if you want to buy a different plan, if you want to buy a plan that doesn't have all those mandates, that's a lot less expensive, you should have the freedom to make that choice for you and your family. HHS this weekend did a study, analyzed the consumer freedom amendment, and the results are incredible. They projected that with the consumer freedom amendment, 2.2 million more people will get health insurance than have right now. You know, the Democrats always attack Republicans, gosh, you know, getting rid of ObamaCare reduces insurance. Well, consumer freedom amendment expands coverage and the most critical piece is it lowers premiums.
BARTIROMO: Can this amendment bridge the gap, the split between the Republicans right now?
CRUZ: I believe so. I think it's the key to bringing together everyone, is that you know, look if premiums go down and don't just go down a little, it goes down a lot, that's a big win. It's a big win for conservatives, it's a big win for moderates. It is a big win for everyone in the party because it is a win for our constituents.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BARTIROMO: What about that, Senator?
PAUL: You know, I've always been a big fan of giving people the freedom to buy whatever kind of insurance including inexpensive insurance. So, I've been supportive of the amendment. However, what I don't like about the process is those who put forward the amendment also agreed that CBO would say it costs a lot of money because what's going to happen is adverse selection will continue in those ObamaCare plans. And so basically, they are getting freedom but having to pay for it with enormous insurance stabilization fund which I call the insurance bailout super fund and I'm not really for that. I'm not for the government giving any private industry taxpayer money. So Cruz has been willing to accept his amendment but he's willing to accept it on a much greater government subsidy and involvement in insurance, and that I'm just not for. I've told them that the one thing that get - could get me to yes is if you take that insurance bailout super fund and put it somewhere else. Take it off of this bill, because I just philosophically, it hurts me deep inside to think of giving a corporation that has doubled their profit under ObamaCare to double their profit again at the backs of the taxpayer, I'm just not for that. That's not - that's not capitalism, that's not free markets, it's not conservative and it's really just not even a Republican idea.
BARTIROMO: Yes, look, and that's why throughout this whole campaign of repealing and replacing, I have followed your thinking very closely and I thought you were going to make this bill even better because you were pushing and pushing and pushing to make sure that this was a plan that was not big government - not - didn't include taxes, it didn't include all of the subsidies, but here we are, at the end of the line, Senator. I mean, if you continue to push back, it is going to - it's going to affect the rest of the agenda. You know that because you wanted to do healthcare before you did tax reform. So are you ready to sit there and say yes, I'm not going to vote yes for that first plan and it is going to be my legacy that I allowed ObamaCare to continue to function or dysfunction?
PAUL: You know, I guess the real question, and this is a big question, are we better off sort of voting for ObamaCare light and a year from now premiums are still going up, we still have the death spiral of ObamaCare and now it's blamed on Republicans, or are we better off actually passing nothing, if we're going to pass ObamaCare light? And actually nothing would still realize that the blame would still go on those who created this disaster, that is the Democrats. They created ObamaCare. Now, I'm not advocating nothing, I want to move forward. One of the big things I want is letting people join these associations but it looks like we're still not certain whether that's going to remain in the bill. There's a little bit of it in the bill but they haven't been willing to negotiate with me to make it better. They've got a little tiny association plan and the parliamentarian is going to decide this weekend whether it stays in the bill or not. An unelected person who is hired by the Senate is going to decide what is in the bill and what is not in the bill and I think that's crazy.
BARTIROMO: And you are good with that even if the Democrats get the majority in next year's elections? You are still good with your decision today?
PAUL: I think what we're more likely to get Democrats in charge and lose politically if we pass something that doesn't work. I don't think the current construct of this bill will work. I think it keeps the fundamental flaw of ObamaCare, the death spiral will continue, and we're going to subsidize it. So here's what next election looks like. There's less money from the government going to poor people but there's more money from the government going to rich people who run insurance companies. I think when voters find out that Republicans gave billions of dollars to rich insurance companies, and took money away from poor people getting Medicaid, I think that's a disaster. So they need to think this thing through because I think just pass it, pass it, pass it is not a great strategy particularly when you wind up with something that looks like poor people got less health care and rich people got more of your money.
BARTIROMO: All right, real quick Senator, before you go, let's say this fails, there's no vote next week. Do you advocate just cutting taxes or forget tax reform as well? Forget the whole agenda?
PAUL: No, I actually - I actually -
BARTIROMO: I think it's a good question to ask if Senate Republicans actually want this President to succeed at this point, got to ask the question. Do you want this President to succeed?
PAUL: Absolutely. I think we can move on to tax cuts, but to tell you the truth, I think clean repeal could even be married with the Senate leadership plan and as long as you took the pork off, I think conservatives would be interested in voting for it, and if the moderates want a porkfest, let's stick their big government spending on another bill and they can probably get that in by working with Democrats and then it's more honest that conservative Republicans could vote for something that looks more like a repeal and helps the situation and we don't have to be forced to swallow a big pork fest that they are sticking on there. But yes, absolutely, I'm for the President's agenda on repealing ObamaCare and reducing taxes
BARTIROMO: All right, we will leave it there. A lot on the agenda Sir, and great analysis. Thanks so much for joining us this morning
PAUL: Thank you.
BARTIROMO: We'll see you soon, Sir, Senator Rand Paul.
And just ahead, more on the shakeup in the press office at the White House. Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove will join me as we look ahead. We know Sean Spicer is out. What about Reines Priebus? We'll get into it next. SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES right here.
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BARTIROMO: Welcome back. The White House set to start its first full week with a revamped communications staff. Sean Spicer announcing he is stepping down as Press Secretary, though he will serve through August. Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will take his spot. She got promoted. And financier Anthony Scaramucci named White House Communications Director. What can we expect from Scaramucci and the new team? Joining us right now is Fox News Contributor Karl Rove. He is the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush. Good to see you, Karl. Thanks so much for weighing in.
KARL ROVE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: you bet. Thanks for having me.
BARTIROMO: Your reaction?
ROVE: Well, look, clearly President Trump had lost confidence in his Press Secretary. I thought Sean Spicer handled his departure in a really classy way. President Trump said he wanted him to stay on but in a subordinate position and Sean Spicer said I think you got too many cooks in the kitchen. It would be better if I went. And I thought that was very classy. Now, I know Anthony Scaramucci, the Mooch as you - as you know him. He's got a lot of pizazz, a lot of personality, he's a scrapper, he's a fighter, he's a kid who came from a modest background. His dad was a sand miner out on Long Island digging sand out of pits to build concrete monsters in Manhattan. And he has never gotten anything easy. And he built a big successful business. And he's a scrapper, and he's good. He's good on television. He's good explaining his relationship with the president. He's good advocating for the president.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
ROVE: And that's all to the plus side.
BARTIROMO: So what - anything negative that you see here?
ROVE: But there - well, there's some challenges. The first challenge is, is look, Sean Spicer had two jobs, Communications Director and Press Secretary. Being a public face as Press Secretary and being the guy behind the scenes who's supposed to be planning. Now, look, I spent seven years in the White House. I saw two very accomplished Communications Chiefs come and go, and about four Press Secretaries come and go. Those are bone killing jobs, each one of them. You can't do two of them. So Anthony is going to face a challenge here, and that he is good on TV but he is also got to be the guy inside the White House with this very complicated job. It is complicated under normal presidents. This is not the normal president. Of making certain there is a plan and an execution of that plan to deliver a focused disciplined message in support of the President's agenda, and that requires a lot of work with all of the moving parts not only of the White House but of the administration and outside allies and the hill and it requires a lot of collegiality and consultation and thoughtfulness and thinking ahead. And that's a big job. And he better not let himself get saddled with two jobs, the public face and behind the scenes the guy who is putting together the plan.
BARTIROMO: That's very good advice actually. Yes, you are right. You know, isn't it interesting, Karl, that these two very key positions, Communications Director, as well as Chief of Staff, Reines Priebus, they were - those two jobs went to the RNC? Sean Spicer was working with Reines Priebus obviously at the RNC and now here we are watching the RNC, watching the GOP, push back in many corners of the President's agenda. So I've been asking the question, and I think it is a fair question. Does the GOP really want this President to succeed? You heard what Jeb Bush earlier said on "Fox & Friends." He said President Trump is not my party. What's going on here? Are they not behind the President? Do they not want him to succeed?
ROVE: Well, look, this was - it's is an unusual President. He was not an active Republican. He supported John Kerry for President in 2004. He contributed money to Hilary Clinton in 08. His largest political contributions before running for president were to help elect NANCY PELOSI Speaker in 2006. In 2007 he said she's doing a great job. My only complaint is she hasn't done enough to impeach George W. Bush. So this is not a guy who's got a big reservoir over his entire political career of being a Republican and supporting Republicans. So he came in the office knowing that.
BARTIROMO: You are absolutely right but now he is on the job - but now he's in the job, Karl, shouldn't they get behind him and get behind him in a big way?
ROVE: Yes. Absolutely. Well, they should. And he needs to get behind them. And for example, this week, he had - we had a bad day on Tuesday, the Senate health care bill looked like it was dead but we had a good day on Wednesday. On Wednesday he calls the senate down to the Hill - down from the Hill to the White House for a meeting. They have a good meeting. The senators walked out of there saying we're going to go get this thing done where 20 of us are going to meet tonight in a planning session but he's reinvigorated us and re-energized us and what happened? That all gets wiped away because the President impulsively gives an interview to the New York Times in which he attacks his own Attorney General and then the next day the rumor is out his advisors are saying we're going to go after Robert Mueller.
BARTIROMO: That's such a good point.
ROVE: And so the President needs to be more disciplined. And one of my hopes - one of my hopes is that look, Scaramucci has a good relationship with Trump. And the question is, is he going to be able to leverage that to say, Mr. President, my job is to advocate for your agenda and we need to get everybody on the same page. In order to get everybody on the same page, there's some pages that you need to rip out of the play book and let us focus on the agenda.
BARTIROMO: Right. So, don't send that tweet, Mr. President. You know, so maybe he will be able to move the needle --
ROVE: Exactly. Exactly right.
BARTIROMO: Exactly, and appeal to the President. Real quick, two separate sources, Karl, have told me they believe Reines Priebus is next out the door. Two separate sources told me yes, he is out the door but they just have not come up with the date yet. Is that what you believe and who would be a betterChief of Staff?
ROVE: Well, I don't know if that's accurate or not because we've had six months - I've never seen anything like this in my life, so many leaks. I was having dinner with two White House officials and they said we can't believe all the sense that the White House is in disarray and we're all at each other's throats. We're great colleagues. I said, man, I just read a Washington Post story in which there are 11 bad quotes for at least 9 different people who are sourced to be White House officials or in the old executive office building, attacking other people in the White House. So one of the things that has to happen here, and the President has to take the lead in this, every President has to set the tone. And that tone is, we're all in this together. Now, this communications situation provides a challenge to that because The Mooch said to Trump, I don't want to report to the Chief of Staff, I want to report directly to you, which undermines the Chief of Staff and that's happened. And the important thing for Scaramucci again is to realize while he's got that authority and that power don't ever use it. As Communications Director, your job is to make certain that all the elements of the White House are working together, and that means before you go independently and to see the President, make sure that if your colleagues, starting with the Chief of Staff and the Senior Adviser, and alleged people and everybody that you are all as much as possible on the same page. It's going to be a real challenge for him. He's got a lot of energy and thanks god he does because this is going to be a really demanding job. The two toughest jobs in the White House other than being President or Vice President are the Press Secretary and she will do a terrific job, she's been doing a good job and a Communications Chief which is often times not seen in public but is a really tough job.
BARTIROMO: And you make so many important points. Very quickly, you had a reaction to my Rand Paul interview, very quickly, Sir, 30 seconds.
ROVE: Look, he's incoherent. Earlier in the year, he said we must do a repeal and replace bill, repeal only would be a disaster, now he's in favor of repeal only. He says the biggest problem with ObamaCare is rising premiums and then he attacks the provision in the Republican bill that provides money to cover those premium increases. ObamaCare is broken. As long as - for the next two years while we have the ObamaCare exchanges, the only way to cover the premiums is to cover the premiums.
BARTIROMO: Karl, thank you so much. Karl Rove, we'll be right back. Stay with us.
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BARTIROMO: Welcome back. As we have been reporting, the race is on this weekend to rally up as many Senate Republicans as possible to get behind a new bill for a vote this week to repeal ObamaCare. Senator James Lankford joins me right now. He's a member of the Appropriations Committee, also Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees. Senator, good to see you, thanks so much for joining us.
SEN. JAMES LANKFORD, R-OKLAHOMA: Good to see you as well. Glad to be with you.
BARTIROMO: You know, most people don't understand the Senate rules. They are complex in terms of the rules on governing. You wrote an op-ed about this and I want to get right to it before we get the status check on that bill to repeal ObamaCare. And you say the genesis of the frustration stems from the rules that provide a minority of Senators the ability to grind the Senate to a complete halt. Well, that rings true this weekend, Sir.
LANKFORD: It certainly rings true. There've been two major proposals I have tried to lay out to try to modernize the rules of the Senate. I completely understand. The Senate is built around this one thing that's very unique, the minority always has a voice. Not in the House of Representatives, not in the White House, not in the Supreme Court, but in the Senate, the only place in the federal government the minority always has a voice. I want to help protect that. But people don't know, there's actually two filibuster votes, once - two called cloture votes for every single bill that comes up, one at the beginning to get on it and another one at the end to get off of it. Well, I've said, get rid one of the one at the beginning. The majority party should always be able to get on whatever bill they want to get on. If the minority is not heard, they won't let them get off the bill. Keep debating it until they get it resolved. The other issue is about time. Right now the Senate Democrats are blocking all the nominations coming up not because they can lose the vote, they can't. Every one of these nominations is now 51, but they can drag them out to 30 hours of debate because we have 30 hours allotted if the minority chooses to have it. So we've only been able to get through a little over 50 nominations total of the more than 200 that we have. If the Democrats keep slow walking everything demanding the30 hours of debate, for every single person, it will be 11 years before president Trump gets his staff.
BARTIROMO: Incredible, incredible. Look, I'm all with you on this obstructionism coming on the left. I watch it every single day, in terms of the left really trying hard to stop President Trump's agenda from getting executed but I've also got to call out some of your colleagues on the right, Senator because I'm now truly asking the question, does the GOP truly want this President to be successful? With all of this division within the Senate and the division that we saw in the House, in terms of getting a bill out to the floor for a vote, does the GOP want this president to succeed?
LANKFORD: More than just want the President to be successful, we want the nation to be successful. We understand things like ObamaCare have major issues and major problems. In my state, rates went up 76 percent, just in one year. Last year, we only have one insurance carrier in the state. So, we understand what this means not just for the President and his legacy but for people at home and for the entire country. So, it's got to be done and it's got to be done right. And those are two key aspects that we're working through right now to make sure that it's right, but that it is actually done at the end of this as well.
BARTIROMO: And we heard from Rand Paul, we heard from Susan Collins, and they say it is not being done right. There are too many things that look like ObamaCare in this bill. Rand Paul is talking about these taxes, the 3.8 percent investment tax, the payroll tax. They're talking about subsidies that are still in place that should have been taken out. How do you as a Republican agree to keep these things in when we know that they are from the Affordable Care Act?
LANKFORD: So, welcome to as we're trying to work through and find common ground among 52 Republicans, not everyone sees it the exact same way, even among Republicans. So, we're trying to work among all of us as well. The challenge that we have right now is people want to make sure that we are protecting people in the safety net. That is always been a goal that people in the safety net need to not just be kicked off and have no access to healthcare. But we all want to make sure - also want to make sure that people can actually buy insurance again. Insurance rates are so expensive now in so many places, people that used to be on insurance can't afford it anymore. We also want to get rid of the employer mandate, individual mandate and return control back to the states. Now, all of those - we all agree on all of those things. It's the how to get it done and what that actually looks like. We're working through the details of that to get it done.
BARTIROMO: What do your colleagues say when you bring up the point of the fact that if this health care bill fails, it's going to impact tax reform as well. The American people voted for this agenda to get executed. Do they care at all or worry at all that, you know, they're going to have a domino effect and they are going to impact the entire agenda not getting executed which is exactly what their colleagues on the left want?
LANKFORD: Absolutely. If they are not worried about it, they should be worried about it. The first promise that we have made to American people is we're going to repeal ObamaCare, try to get rid of as much as we possibly can and then try to replace it with something that actually returns power back to people in the states to be able to make those decisions. If we can't fulfill the first promise, it is hard to believe the second one gets done.
BARTIROMO: Yes, exactly.
LANKFORD: And so, this has to be done. It has to be done now and then to move on to tax reform. We're going to get the economy moving again. That's one of many vehicles, regulatory reform, economic reform, how we're handling tax reform, all those matter. There's no silver bullet in recovering the economy fully, but definitely one of the major pieces is tax reform.
BARTIROMO: And real quick, on tax reform, Senator, do you have common ground that you can tell us about? What do you all agree on? What are the sticking points? In terms of being revenue neutral, do you want a border adjustment tax in there? That's one of the sticking points, right? That's one of the issues up for debate. How many deductions go, how many stays and what would the corporate rate be? Are you all the way down at 15 percent which is where President Trump is?
LANKFORD: Yes, I would be open to 15 percent rate for the corporate rate, and I'm not with a border tax - border adjustment tax. The border adjustment tax has come out from some in the House is not been well supported in the Senate and the White House did not include it in their proposal when it came out. There are a lot of details and as you know, when you start adjusting the dials on tax, there's a lot of dials and they all move at once. The basic principle of it, we do have common ground. We need to simplify as much as possible, be able to make sure that people can control it and quite frankly, I want international companies that are American based companies functioning all over the world, not having incentive to leave the country to do operations. They need to be able to stay here and bring their money back here. Right now we punish companies for headquartering here and doing business overseas. That is exactly the opposite of what should be done.
BARTIROMO: Senator, good to see you, Sir. Thanks so very much.
LANKFORD: Thank you.
BARTIROMO: Senator Lankford there.
Meanwhile, a big week on Capitol Hill, this upcoming week the Intelligence Committees in Congress are going to be questioning one of the key members of the Trump administration on alleged ties to Russia. Our panel is up next as we look ahead to next week on SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES right now. Stay with us.
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BARTIROMO: Welcome back. The investigation of the potential Russian collusion in the 2016 Presidential Election is getting more complicated. Russia's Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak wrapping up his post and returning to Russia as the Washington Post reports he told
Moscow then Senator Jeff Sessions did discuss the Trump campaign when they met last year, something that the Attorney General has previously denied.
Meanwhile, Jared Kushner will testify before the House and Senate Intel Committees in private this week. Our panel now on deck, Ed Rollins is former White House Advisor to President Reagan and a Fox News Contributor. Ian Bremmer is with us this morning, President and Founder of the Eurasia Group, great to see you both.
ED ROLLINS, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: Thank you.
BARTIROMO: Thank you so much for joining us. First I got to talk to you Ian, about the news that you broke over the last week that President Trump had that second meeting at the G20, the mainstream media went nuts over it, that there was this big private meeting. Just explain to me how is it a private meeting if he's sitting there at the table with the G20?
IAN BREMMER, EURASIA GROUP PRESIDENT, AND FOUNDER: It wasn't a private meeting. The thing was, the dinner itself was incredibly long. It was 3 1/2 hours. It's only the principals and their spouses. Trump is getting bored, he's sitting next to the Prime Minister's wife from Japan who's not talking to him at all. And so halfway through he goes around the table and sits down next to the one person that he feels comfortable with, apparently not Melania, it is Putin. And the reason it became a story is not because it was so nefarious but because America's allies understand that the one person that the American President has a great relationship with isn't them.
BARTIROMO: Well, I don't know, I got to push back on that. He had a very good trip to Saudi Arabia.
BREMMER: Yes.
BARTIROMO: The head of Saudis -
BREMMER: Saudi King wasn't there.
BARTIROMO: But the Saudi's were all over him in terms of - you know, showing him respect, a lot more respect than the U.S. media gives him that's for sure. He went to Europe, met with Macron in France, they seemed to just get on really well. So I don't know that you could say it's the only person that he's -
BREMMER: No, no, no. In that room, I'm saying the heads of state all found he wanted to spend very close, very engaged, one hour, Putin is the guy he feels comfortable with. If you're Merkel, if you're May, if you're Justin Trudeau, I mean, if you're traditional allies of the United States, you legitimately find that very strange. It wasn't like they had planned to, hey, you know, Vlad, I'm going to sit down with you in front of these guys and let's work something out.
BARTIROMO: Well, the way the mainstream media played it, it was like a secret meeting that they had more to discuss, Ed. I mean, that's all, that's why I'm asking the question.
ROLLINS: The critical thing, in the first six months, whatever the Russian plan was, whatever the collusion, which I don't believe it was, but whatever it was, Russia has been front and center for six months. Putin couldn't be happier. It's all we talk about (INAUDIBLE) talks about it. Our whole government is up in arms over Russia, who talked to who and what and where. And I think that this President doesn't understand that and clearly, at the end of the day, this is going to drag on for a long period of time. And obviously it's probably the Achilles Heel of this administration, right? Today, not about our foreign policy with Russia but basically the whole side bar stuff.
BARTIROMO: Well, we'll get to the foreign policy and the agenda in the next block but let's talk about Jared Kushner justifying next week behind closed-doors. What do they want to ask him? What do you think comes out of this meeting next week?
BREMMER: Well, I think the most important thing is the nature of the meeting he had with Donald Trump Jr. and these Russians ostensibly because they had information about Hilary Clinton and the campaign. And do they really - is it going to be credible that nothing came from the meeting, or has information actually changed hands? I think that's critical. They're clearly going to be talking about some of Kushner's financial connections with the Russians as well because Mueller is digging very significantly into that. The fact that Jared is caught up in any of this is deeply problematic for the Trump administration.
BARTIROMO: Does Jared Kushner help the President or could he become a liability at this? I know that he trusts him more than most people. It's his son-in-law, but what do you think, Ed?
ROLLIN: I think there's a real danger and I think this week is probably the most dangerous week Jared will have because the issue here is he's not experienced at testifying. Half the room will be trying to get him indicted. The danger here is always integrity. It's about, do you misstate something and do they come back and they try to charge you with lying to a congressional hearing which is a deadly sin in Washington, D.C.? And I think to a certain extent he better knows everything that he's going to be asked and he better knows every answer before he gets in that room.
BARTIROMO: Yes. And of course, this whole conversation will overtake the conversation of the agenda, which I also want to talk about because it is a big week for ObamaCare and the potential repeal and replace. So we will get to that next. Well, take a short break. When we come back, repealing ObamaCare and coming up with tax reform, are they linked our panel will weigh in on that as we look ahead on SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES next. Stay with us.
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BARTIROMO: We are back with our panel. Ed Rollins and Ian Bremmer is with us. So this is big week for the health care vote. Do you think we're going to get a vote on the floor of the Senate to repeal ObamaCare, Ed?
ROLLINS: We're going to get vote, we don't know what we're going to vote on. That's the key thing.
BARTIROMO: That's what Rand Paul said.
ROLLINS: And we don't know - we don't know - and the amazing thing to me only is there's only 52 Republicans and to one has a count. Why the President when he had all of them moved for lunch the other day didn't say how many are for me and ask for a raise of hands. I just paid for your lunch, tell me if you are for me or against me, and we can't do that. No one seems to know what that is. And that is astonishing to someone who has watched politics and done it for 50 years. I think they're going to have a hard time getting anything this week. I think there are a lot of other issues, the House, the Budget, the Fence, what have you - the sanctions bill which obviously the President is going to decide whether he's going to veto it. If he vetoes it, it is a disaster. And I think to a certain extent, there's a long hard way to go here. And the votes aren't there and with McCain being out, it makes it even more difficult.
BARTIROMO: It does. They're really getting a hard hand dealt, aren't they? What do you think Ian?
BREMMER: Yes. Well, I mean, specifically on this Russia sanctions bill, he's been (INAUDIBLE) it's linked to more sanctions on Iran and North Korea which Trump actually wants. And they would have veto proof majorities on this bill. So as a consequence, Trump is going to have to suck it up and support it which means that his desire to engage more with the Russians to reduce sanctions which he's made very clear over the course of the past month, he can't actually do. And so much of the fact that this has become this big breaking continual news story has meant that ultimately as happy as Putin may be to be in the news, ultimately his relationship with the U.S. is probably worse under Trump than it would have been under Hillary.
ROLLINS: I agree with that totally.
BARTIROMO: You agree with that. Look, do you think at this point the success of the agenda is going to dictate what happens in terms of a majority in whether Democrats take the majority?
ROLLINS: I assume Trump is going to stay at a very low approval rating throughout his Presidency, 38, 39, 40 percent. He's just - he's going to be like Harry Truman, he never gets popular until afterward and he only gets popular if he passes things. But, for the sake of the House of Representatives, they can't be running 10, 12 points behind Democrats in the generic vote which is what they're getting close to. They have to have accomplishments to talk about and tax is probably the most important thing today and some effort on the -on the repealing the ObamaCare.
BARTIROMO: Hasn't foreign policy, though, Ian, been a success for this President so far? I mean, when you look at the trips that he's taken, they seem to be very successful, no?
BREMMER: Well, some of it is successful, certainly in terms Saudi Arabia and Israel, Poland, yes. In terms of Europe and America's Asia allies, also Canada and Mexico, you'd have to say no. Look, I do think that unlike on the domestic side where after an American President doesn't do that much, nobody's bothered. In the case of foreign policy, America's influence in the world was deteriorating before Trump. I mean, clearly -
BARTIROMO: Has he fixed - has he helped make it better?
BREMMER: No, I mean, I think that you've got people like Mody in India that came over and really wanted a better relationship with Trump and that's happened. But generally speaking, I think U.S. influence continues to deteriorate.
BARTIROMO: All right. We'll leave it there. Ian Bremmer, Ed Rollins, great to see you both. Thank you so much. Have a great Sunday, everybody. I'll see you tomorrow.
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