North Korea Nuclear Fears; Stunning Republican Failure on Health Care Reform.
REINCE PRIEBUS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: You have to accept the fact that there is 1,000 opinions. I mean, so, I'm so used to it, that I don't -- I don't even care. It doesn't bother me.</s>QUESTION: You're not pulling out your hair.</s>PRIEBUS: Not -- no, I'm not. People assume, oh, you must be miserable. You got a horrible job. But I don't see it that way. I'm not -- that's what I'm saying. I'm not pouring Baileys in my cereal. I'm not sitting here trying to find the Johnnie Walker. This is fun.</s>QUESTION: Is it Baileys in his Fruit Loops now, Jamie?</s>JAMIE GANGEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think it's Baileys. I think it's Johnnie Walker. I think he's pulling out his hair.</s>LINETTE LOPEZ, BUSINESS INSIDER: Sounds great.</s>GANGEL: I don't think he's having fun, is the bottom line. Just to put this in some context, we're only six months in.</s>BALDWIN: Right.</s>GANGEL: This is not the first go-round where Reince Priebus is out and there are all of these rumors that he's not long for this job, and his allies are pushing back, saying he's not going anywhere. That said, the level of the rumors, the dysfunction, the push is certainly different this week than we have ever heard before. But let's not forget, he serves at the pleasure of one person. That's Donald Trump, and that's when we will know if he's in the job or if he's out.</s>BALDWIN: Yes. Ladies, thank you so much. Not enough time. Let's talk more Scaramucci, the Mooch, next week.</s>LOPEZ: Any time you want.</s>BALDWIN: OK. Thank you so much. Let's continue on, hour two.</s>ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.</s>BALDWIN: We continue on. You're watching CNN on this Friday afternoon. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We have more now on the stunning defeat of the Republicans' effort to repeal Obamacare. Moments ago, President Trump, going off-script, sounding off against Congress.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They should have approved health care last night, but you can't have everything. Boy, oh, boy. They have been working on that one for seven years. Can you believe that? The swamp. But we will get it done. We're going get it done. You know, I said from the beginning let Obamacare implode and then do it. I turned out to be right. Let Obamacare implode.</s>BALDWIN: "Let Obamacare implode," he says. In the end, it was just 19 seconds that dashed the seven years of hope. After debating into the wee hours of the morning, it was Senator John McCain right there who shocked a lot of his colleagues on the Republican side, casting the third no vote, giving the dramatic thumbs down on the Senate floor. There you go. Joining me more to talk about this and what happens next for health care in this country, Jake Tapper, host of "STATE OF THE UNION" and "THE LEAD." Jake Tapper, what do you make of the president first off just there in Long Island saying, let Obamacare implode?</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, I mean, as a policy, it's not really optimal. I mean, Obamacare is failing in several parts of the country, with premiums going up, with very few options, with health insurance plans withdrawing from the exchanges. And the idea of letting it implode means millions of Americans continuing to have skyrocketing premiums or have very few, if any, options when it comes to health care. It means, let Americans suffer. So it's not really a policy prescription in any sense.</s>BALDWIN: On health care, we just played the moment, the thumbs down with Senator McCain. There's so many story lines, you know, President Obama's former opponent saving Obama's signature piece of legislation or coming back from cancer diagnosis to cast this deciding vote, or the senator who hasn't seen eye to eye with President Trump delivering a major blow to his agenda two years and a week from Donald Trump saying he wasn't a hero. Whatever it is, did it seem that Senator McCain took one for the team, defending other senators who have been vulnerable for voting yes? How do you see that?</s>TAPPER: From talking to people around McCain, it really comes down to the idea of his lack of confidence in the process and the fact that there was this possibility out there that so-called skinny repeal, which was ultimately what the Republicans were voting for, except for three of them, and the Democrats were voting against., skinny repeal -- that's banning any federal dollars going to Planned Parenthood, the repeal of the individual mandate, the repeal of the employer mandate, and also the removal of the medical device tax -- that that -- the fear that that would actually become the health care law. That was what McCain was concerned about. Obviously, we know all the back and forth. The Democrats -- I'm sorry -- the Republicans in the House passed their bill. Republicans in the Senate couldn't come up with one. The pitch was to Republicans, just pass skinny repeal, and then we will have a conference committee, where Republicans in the House and Senate will sit down and actually write legislation. But Speaker Paul Ryan would not really guarantee and could not, could not really guarantee that skinny repeal wouldn't just be passed by the House and then signed by President Trump and become law. And that was what McCain was really worried about. He did not want -- he didn't trust this idea that it was just going to be a vessel or a vehicle for this big successful Republican health care legislation that would come down the pike through conference committee. He was afraid that it was going to be a trap, that ultimately House Republicans were just going to pass skinny repeal, President Trump would sign it into law, they would be able to check the box, we repealed Obamacare, we did this successful thing, and that, ultimately, it was lousy legislation. So that's why he voted the way he did.</s>BALDWIN: So that's the why on Senator McCain. But what about the other two no's? You had two ladies, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, also no's as well. Just want to mention that. And between this, Jake, and then the Russian sanctions bill, and the defense of the A.G., Jeff Sessions, it seems like more and more Republican lawmakers are starting to stand up to the president, stand up to the White House.</s>TAPPER: Yes, it's not as surprising from Collins and Murkowski, who have been more mavericky...</s>BALDWIN: Mavericky.</s>TAPPER: ... than even John McCain in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to health care legislation. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have been expressing a lot of concerns about original drafts of the bill that took away funding for Medicaid, the health program, the government health program for poorer people and for disabled people. They expressed concern about banning -- not allowing women to spend their Medicaid dollars to get checkups or birth control with Planned Parenthood. There are a lot of things that they were upset about. What's more surprising is when you see Dick Shelby, the Republican of Alabama, or Chuck Grassley, the Republican of Iowa, who's chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, those gentlemen saying things to the White House like, I'm not going to confirm another attorney general. That's not what the Judiciary Committee's doing. Or their deep offense they have taken at the way President Trump has been treating Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who, of course, is a former colleague of theirs.</s>BALDWIN: Right.</s>TAPPER: That's where you see a lot of these Republicans starting to stand up. And then, of course, very significantly is this Russia sanctions bill which passed the House and Senate overwhelmingly with veto-proof majorities and then some, even though the White House has been lobbying against it. There's a real lack of confidence expressed in what President Trump's doing in any number of these incidents that I just mentioned.</s>BALDWIN: Thus the more and more people standing up against him. Jake Tapper, thank you so much for all that. We will see you, as we always do, on "THE LEAD" at the top the of the hour. Thank you, sir.</s>TAPPER: Thanks.</s>BALDWIN: Let's talk North Korea now. The Pentagon is telling CNN that Pyongyang has fired another ballistic long-range missile, this one up in the air for about 45 minutes, about eight minutes longer than the last, landed just about 80 miles off the coast of Japan. Kim Jong-un has now launched a dozen missiles this year, and this comes as fears grow about progress toward developing a nuclear weapon. CNN's Will Ripley is live in Beijing. He has spent a lot of time inside of North Korea. And Jamie Metzl is here with me, a former staff member on the National Security Council and a senior fellow on the Atlantic Council. And he's also just back from China, where he held meetings about the future of North Korea. So, Will Ripley, just first to you, tell me more about the trajectory of this ICBM, the significance that it was so close to Japan, and any sort of reaction.</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: South Korea's saying, Brooke, that this is more advanced than the ICBM that was launched on the Fourth of July. Its highest altitude was 3,700 kilometers, around 2,300 miles. It traveled a distance of about 1,000 kilometers, landing within 100 nautical miles of Japan in those waters known as the Exclusive Economic Zone. This trajectory is significant because they launched it really high and then it kind of went over and down like this, but had it been launched at a normal trajectory, it could have put much of the United States within striking range. We're talking about cities as far away as Denver, maybe even Chicago. And, of course, the analysts have been saying now, at the State Department, that, by early next year, so a matter of months from now, North Korea could have a reliable ICBM, so a missile they could launch at any moment that could carry a nuclear warhead to the mainland U.S. with pretty decent accuracy. That's very frightening for people who are watching North Korea and weren't even predicting this rapid of pace of a development even as recently as six months ago, Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: That's -- Jamie, good to see you.</s>JAMIE METZL, FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Hello.</s>BALDWIN: That's when people's ears start to perk, though, when they hear cities Denver and Seattle thrown in the mix. First, just your response to again yet another ICBM test, but also the fact that it went higher, was up in the air longer, which change the arithmetic around, it can go much farther out.</s>METZL: So, it's very, very clear North Korea's goal in this is to develop a deliverable nuclear weapons capability capable of hitting anywhere in the United States, and, frankly, that means anywhere in the world. So, each one of these incremental steps is an increase, but the core problem is the same today as it was yesterday, which is that North Korea has an advanced missiles program, an advanced nuclear weapons program, and that's all going to come together into more and more and greater and greater precision in their ability to deliver these deadly payloads. And that leads us, again, to this same situation about what needs to be done. The Trump administration policy has been a total tatters. There's no known policy. The United States has weakened its critical alliances with South Korea and Japan. It's undermined its leverage with China.</s>BALDWIN: What about China? You were just there.</s>METZL: Yes, I was just there and I was speaking to top Chinese leaders.</s>BALDWIN: Did they say?</s>METZL: And what they were saying was, well, this is your problem. The United States needs to do more.</s>BALDWIN: Your problem? Check the geography.</s>METZL: Exactly. That's exactly what I was saying to them, because North Korea nuclear weapons, we need to -- the United States will continue to do more of what we have been doing, which is try, in spite of the problems we're having under this administration, to strengthen and shore up our alliances, rebalancing of military assets, building of our strategic missile defense capabilities. All of those things weaken China. And if North Korea develops -- further develops its nuclear weapons, there's going to be a lot of pressure, as there is now on South Korea and then possibly Japan, to develop their nuclear weapons. And that makes that environment much more complicated. And so the Chinese really need to step up in a much bigger way than they have so far.</s>BALDWIN: All of this as the U.S. has shortened our own timetable and calendar of when we think they will be nuclear-capable. That said, we wait for more fallout and the response for President Trump. Thank you so much, Jamie, for coming by. Appreciate it. And, Will Ripley, for all your trips to North Korea, we thank you as well. Ahead here, two of the people closest to the president in this feud -- we have new reporting today about the fate of the chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and the vulgar attack he received from the new guy at the White House. Plus, Russia retaliating as Congress sends a new sanctions bill to the president's desk. The key question, this is what Jake Tapper was alluding to, will he sign it? And from the Boy Scouts speech to the president declaring himself as the most presidential president ever, let's take a look back at the week that was, a week that might have been his wildest yet. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.