PLUS: Price on the Senate healthcare bill: “If you look at it in its totality … we will bring down premiums”

EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.): Trump “makes it a lot harder for himself” with his tweets

EXCLUSIVE: Malcolm Gladwell on Trump tweets: “You can’t be shocked. He’s being who he is”

JULY 2, 2017 — In an exclusive interview this morning, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price addressed the president’s tweets this week attacking MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts, telling moderator Chuck Todd that the president “can do more than one thing at a time” and is “absolutely not” too distracted to campaign for health care.

Price claimed that analyses that show premiums rising for seniors don’t take into account everything HHS is doing to roll back rules and regulations: “If you look at it in its totality, and nobody’s looking at it in its totality, we will bring down premiums.” Watch the full interview.

Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) exclusively joined the program, addressing the president’s tweets this week: Carper noted that Trump “makes it a lot harder for himself,” while Cassidy said, “I wake up in the morning and I read about the LSU Tigers. I don’t read about the president’s tweets,” calling them “reprehensible.”

On the Senate healthcare bill, Carper said, “This is a great opportunity to pause. This is a great opportunity for guys like Bill and me and others to say, “What is it in the Affordable Care Act that we should fix, that needs to be fixed?”” Watch the full interview.

Malcolm Gladwell, writer for The New Yorker and host of the “Revisionist History” podcast, told Todd that “the only thing worse than a complete lack of trust between the press and the government is press and a government that are completely chummy.” And when it comes to the president’s tweets, “Trump is not behaving out of character in those moments. That’s sort of a crucial thing to remember. It’s why you can’t be shocked. He’s being who he is.” Watch the full interview.

Radio talk show host and MSNBC host Hugh Hewitt, NBC News’ Kasie Hunt, BBC News’ Katty Kay and The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson joined this morning’s roundtable and reacted to Trump’s latest tweet this morning, which featured a video of him wrestling a CNN avatar.

Read the full transcript of this morning’s “Meet the Press” on MeetThePress.com.

For more from moderator Chuck Todd throughout the week, sign up for the “First Read” newsletter, and subscribe to the “1947: The Meet The Press Podcast” for on-demand interviews.

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