Hello everyone. It is Thursday, March 2nd, 2017. I'm Scott Bland, your host, and this is

Politico's Nurdcast. Big week wrapping up that we previewed for you last time out, Trump gave his first

address to a joint session of Congress that Republicans hailed as a game changer for his presidency,

and not 24 hours later, there we all were talking about Russia again.

And meanwhile, some of Republicans self-imposed deadlines for passing Obamacare are looming and it's still not clear

what the bill is going to look like. So we're going to talk about all that and more

this week. Jump into data points in a second, but first a couple quick housekeeping notes.

Remember, please send us your questions at nerdcast at politico.com

and please subscribe, rate us, and write written reviews if you have time on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

All right, here are the numbers that mattered this week.

4,983.

That's the number of words in President Trump's speech before Congress Tuesday night, which the administration and its allies desperately hoped were a turning point for his young presidency, only to have the news cycle wrenched out of their grasp once again by stories regarding contact between

Trump Associates and Russia.

The next data point, that's the number 36, that is the number of days before the internal

deadline that some Republican leaders have set for passing Obamacare repeal.

And our third data point, switching sides of the aisle, that's the number 235.

That's the number of votes that former Labor Secretary Tom Perez got for DNC chair last weekend on the second ballot.

All right, a lot to talk about as usual and we have the same panel going tape to tape today.

Senior politics editor, Charlie Matessian. Hello?

Hi Scott. Chief investigative reporter Ken Vogel.

That's me. Hi. And senior reporter Nancy Cook.

Hi.

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