drawing from that nation's oil revenues according to the world research forum. as the price of oil has dipped so too have the number of subsidy resip gents in iran, however, iran still pays the majority of its citizens something. that is all for our show this week. thank you for joining us. we'll see you next week. i'm brian stelter. welcome to our viewers in the united states and all around the world. this is "reliable sources," our weekly look at the story behind the story, about the media and how it really works and how the news gets made. breaking news right now. president trump calling out his own secretary of state. we'll get into that. plus the late nest in the nfl w players from the new orleans saints and the miami dolphins standing but some also kneeling at the game in lon on the this morning. we'll have the latest on nfl versus trump. there are also new developments on a number of other fronts including the russia investigations. new details in recent days about

twitter and facebook and how those platforms were used by russian hackers trying to influence american voters. we'll dive sb that in detail with two special guests. plus later, a look at pentagon media coverage. is the pentagon cracking down on access to the defense department? a former spokesman for the pentagon will join me live. but first, president trump and what is really his alternate reality about hurricane maria. maria made landfall in puerto rico 11 days ago. the island is still without power, communications are still scarce, people are still struggling there. this is a slow-motion crisis. and all the evidence suggests that both federal and local government responses were flawed and inadequate. but trump and his media allies are swearing that the response has been great and they are blaming the san juan mayor and the puerto ricans who, quote, want everything to be done for them. the president calls for unity in

one teat tweet but attacks the media in the next tweet. fake news. the fake news slur is back. he's used it eight times so far this weekend claiming that journalists are disparaging first responders. at one point he explicitly said, "to the people of puerto rico, do not believe the fake news." do not believe your eyes. that's what the u.s. president is basically saying. his aides are all over tv and social media promoting the government's relief efforts. pro trump media outlets are echoing this alternate reality claiming things are going great. but here's the thing -- news outlets that are actually reporting on the ground, that have actually dispatched correspondents, are telling a very different and much more nuanced story. that's why i say trump has an alternate reality right now about puerto rico, but we've got to remain committed to the ground truth. so let's go there. first ta leyla santiago, cnn correspondent there for the landfall of maria, and has been

there ever since. you were born on the island, able to get back to your hometown a couple days ago. it to ask you about that. first most recent comment from the president on twitter saying all the buildings on the island have been inspected. do we know if that was true? >> reporter: that was news to governor or it appeared to be anyway, when he was asked about that very statement in which trump says things are going great, on twitter, every single building, all buildings have beenment in ed. that appeared to be news to the governor when he was asked about that this morning. he actually said that's not the case. he doesn't know of such inspections. and he went on to say, brian, that he actually, the government here, hasn't been able to reach all of the parts of puerto rico because there are so many parts that are very, very remote, very difficult to get to. the first challenge was getting through floods and the debris on the road. now that much of that has become accessible -- by the way, many of the neighbors, the communities, the puerto rican

themselves, now that much of that has been cleared, they still haven't been able to reach much of the island. let me go over some of the numbers. the cell phone towers, only about 11% of them have been restored. when it comes to power, only about 5% of the power here has been restored. so, you know, terrific job? i would say the puerto ricans and their community have certainly proven to do so in certain parts of the island in which the first responders have not been able to get to. >> what's been the hardest piece of this for you as a reporter? is it the communications difficulties? >> reporter: right. from a personal level, i'm from here and it's hard to watch such devastation and destruction, but as a reporter, communication, that's what we do for a living and it's been so difficult not only to reach people but also to reach government officials. how do you hold them accountable when you can't even reach them? how do you get an idea of what

actually is happening on an island of 3.5 million u.s. citizens when you can't reach all the mayors, when you can't get to some of the towns because of the communication? and even so, in talking to the puerto ricans, yesterday, when we were talking to people trying to get reaction to president trump's tweets, many of them had not even seen the tweets because their cell phones aren't working. they're not aware of what's happening. they're relying on word of mouth or for us to show them pictures to bring in, you know, the headlines so that they can see from our tools because communication is just such a barrier right now, not just for first responders, for the government, but to carry out journalism. >> leila, stick around. i want to continue this conversation and broaden it out about the coverage of the past 11 days. i found myself onnering what's the correlation between the news media's attention and the president's attentionsome i know

in some ways this is a chicken and egg scenario. when maria made landfall, laie action was there, and you can see the coverage was not as high as for irma or harvey. there was a relative media calm right after the storm. people like leyla and cbs' david begnaud continued to report. there wasn't a spike until monday. cnn and msnbc talked about maria more on air than fox. news crews alerted the rest of the country to the desperation of the citizens on the island. according to "the washington post," the coverage captured trump's attention too. let's get into a the correlation if there is one with our panel. tara, do you see a correlation,

the more television coverage there is of this crisis the more the president's tweeting about it? >> absolutely. the president consumes television all day long. he hates being criticized. and he has a very standard pattern. when someone criticizes him, he punches back twice as hard regardless of if that person is krit sizing him is a victim. and it doesn't -- there's nothing humane about going after someone who is stroug uggling wa humanitarian process and a crisis. essentially we're seeing a typical true pattern for donald trump. he's also tapping the fact to his base, puerto rico feels very far away. and it could come off as a political issue in some ways because, you know, a large -- basically it's a largely democratic island. and, you know, they may not have family in puerto rico, they may not be communicating with them about what's going on on the ground so, it's a no-loss situation for trump, just feeding red meat to his base

right now on twitter. >> last night's "snl," here was the cold open, the writers of "snl" came up with a very quick response to this san juan mayor versus president trump situation. let's watch this clip. >> to have to help people, we have to take care of america first. >> wait. you d know we're a u.s. territory, don't you? >> i mean, i do, but not many people know that, no. >> that's a joke, edwin, but does it sum up how people really feel? >> sometimes a joke is the best way to approach reality and to come across with, you know, a reality check for the media and everybody else. but i think if there is a lot of truth in the joke that they made. >> what about your view of the coverage of the past 11 days? >> well, the reality is that it was a little bit slow prior to it. there were very few outlets that had actually coverage on the ground. and then right after when it was

clear the devastation and impact of the hurricane, very few others were able to send crews down there. >> there were difficulties in actually being able to report the story. >> yes, because the airport was closed, so there were a lot of difficulties. and shortly as the transportation was restored and communication were not restored, remember, there were no cell phones, so the whole thing was very difficult to catch up. thank you to all the ones that have gone down, because the coverage of this is going to make a big difference in how we move forward. >> informing people about it. tara, let me show you a sound bite from president trump at that alabama rally two fridays ago. this was a couple days after the landfall -- actually, i'm not sure we have it, but two days after the landfall of hurricane maria, he ak knowledges florida and texas and says went one part of america hurts we all hurt. i found myself wondering where

is that president trump today? >> you know, his mood, his whims, for president trump he's a very personal president and he hasn't shown that he has -- he's putting his political will behind puerto rico the same way he did with florida and houston because frankly it's not politically beneficial for him to get behind puerto rico. instead, he spnds the entire weekend creating a faux controversy around the nfl. and that topic ends up dominating the newspaper coverage, the television coverage, and in a way he's basically diverting everyone's attention to a faux controversy when there's a real crisis on the frouground. when it became apparent it was a real crisis, he's facing the real situation and the accountability of journalism is how that has come to light. >> there's this optics issue, i kind of hate the word optics, but the president used it on friday about tom price, saying he didn't like the optics of tom

price's flying private jets. he's at his personal golf course this weekend and i think optics of that deserve scrutiny. >> exactly, especially for a person who spent the big part of his life not in public service and who actually criticized the president before him for, you know, golfing during crisis. it's amazing -- >> i forgot about that. that's right. >> and one journalist pulled up a tweet that trump put out in 2011 criticizing obama for golfing during a crisis situation as well. there's a tweet for every moment in his presidency. >> so let's look ahead, leyla, there in san juan right now, going out to other parts of the island. what story do you most want to tell now? what are we not maybe seeing right now in the coverage? >> reporter: excuse me, brian. it's just the need for medical attention. i wept to my hometown. excuse me. and i was able to see my family, and this's the relief i needed on a personal level, to hug people e and say i'm glad to see

you're okay, i'm glad to hear you, because, again, cell phones are down. so many people in the u.s. right now are contacting me via social media to say please check on my grandfather or my aunt or my brother, my sister, they're elderly, we haven't heard from them. that's because, again, cell phone towers are a problem. but in my hometown, brian, when i was there, i found out the hospital was down. there's no hospital. when i went to shelter, the shelter has people living in classrooms. the generator had been out for six days. living in those classrooms you had people with cancer, hiv, die peets, children with asthma. president it's a nightmare -- nightmare jus doesn't seem to be enough. i haven't been able to find the words. moving forward, how to do we move forward on an island where the help may be arriving, the president may think we're doing a terrific job, in the meantime you have cancer patients in a

classroom in the mountains in a town with no power, no medical attention, no food, the refrigerator went out when the generator went out, and so help is not arriving. when the government says it is hard to get to some of those areas, that's why we went in on a chopper to see for ourselves what can we -- what do we see when we arrive, when we figure out how to get there when the government doesn't? and what we found in so many of those places, we were the first to get there. they haven't seen the help. they haven't seen or felt any of this help supposedly being done and is a terrific job. >> and this is why it's no time for fake news slurs from the president of the united states. thank you to the panel. when kwoem back, some breaking news about the president. just when you thought you couldn't be shocked by a trump tweet. he says rex tillerson is wasting his time trying to negotiate with north korea.

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welcome back to "reliable sources." "snl" is pack, and that means alec baldwin is back, playing president trump. santa anitale with, trust me, it may seem like what's coming out of my mouth is b-a-n-a-s, but the more chaos i cause, the less people can focus. they're all so tired. let me show you. how long ago did i declare war on north korea and the rocket man? >> four months. >> wrong. it was last friday. see, i'm pending time. >> i'm bending time.

and there is truth to that joke. so much trump-centered news happens every day you might have forgotten his embarrassing loss in an alabama race last tuesday when the steve bannon and breitbart-backed candidate beat trump's pick. he deleted some of his tweets promoting strange. that same day the health care effort collapsed again. trump blamed it on an unspecified gop senator stuck in the hospital unable to vote pip guess he made this up because there was no hospitalized senator. it's true that cochran was recuperating at home after a medical procedure, but he was ready to fly to d.c. to vote anytime. the most embarrassing story of all was probably friday's resignation of secretary tom price. his exit followed impressive reporting by politico about all the private flights price took on the taxpayer dime. how's that for a refresh sh on the week? let's talk about wit seth man dell, operator for "the new york post," and his wife, bethany mendel, contributor at the

federalist. a husband and wife duo here. as if to prove our point about the overwhelming amount of trump news, we have some new tweets in the past couple minutes from the president. let's put them on screen because they are shocking by any standard. the president says, "i told rex tillerson, our wonderful secretary of state, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate little rocket man." meaning the leader of north korea. the president added, "save your rex. we'll do what has to be done!" i don't know what to say. bethany, tell me what to make of this. >> i think that i -- it's going to be really hard for me to be scared pi anything trump tweets anymore. it's sort of -- it's all so crazy that -- i mean, the week being so hard to recap, it's kind of what he wants it to be like. he wants it to be so hard to follow that people just stop following it. >> you think it's intentional. >> oh, yeah. absolutely. the news cycle is going so quickly that people are tuning to out because it's too much to

process. >> seth, do you think it's intention nal also? >> i'm not sure anymore. one thing that happens with trump is he is a this 24/7 guy and comes from the entertainment world so he doesn't take weekends off so -- and he also doesn't like to not be the focus of the news cycle, so he seeks to capture the news cycle even when it's saturday or sunday. >> even when it's not about him. >> right. i think that's something he did during the campaign. you know, hillary clinton would have -- there would be a bad story about -- negative story about hillary clinton in "the times" or somewhere and you think she'd be reeling far day or the two but he would swoop in with a tweet and -- he has to -- trump abhors a vacuum, basically, is how to put it. so i think some of this is, yes, getting the attention, but also he seems to want to be playing some form of good cop/bad cop. i asked on twitter a few moments ago what people thought he was doing and that was the number-one response, but this isn't exactly how you play good cop/bad cop.

>> or they're just not talking. that's another possibility that's sort of scary. >> -- indicating it would be a trump story. >> why not? >> that's interesting. what about this idea that the president saying -- what we learned yesterday was essentially that tillerson says he has a direct line of communication with pyongyang. that was a big deal. now we have the president dismissing that. does that seem threatening to you? >> i mean, everything is threatening when you have a mad man. and i'm not just talk about trump. they're both mad men and it's all brinksmanship. so, you know, i don't believe a lot that comes out of the white house and about the white house, so -- >> you're a conservative writer. you don't believe most of what you hear from the white house? >> and about the white house. i think we don't know a lot of what's going on and there's a lot of news stories that are out that might not necessarily be true and probably aren't true, and one of them is i don't think we have a direct line to pyongyang or we would have known what was happening with otto

warmbier before he got off the plane in a comatose state near death. >> but the state department says we do vit so, maybe that's dysfunction in the government? >> or they're lying. >> or they're lying. let's put his tweets back on the screen. i want to underscore how extraordinary this is to see the president calling out of his secretary of state. he's saying rex is wasting his time trying to negotiate with little rocket man. when i look at this, seth, i wonder, are we at the point where folks on tv should be questioning the president's stability? >> i think he may want them to question his stability, but again, i think he's playing the game wrong. it harkens back to mad man theory, which was the idea that usually associated with richard nixon that he wanted communist states to think that he would overreact to provocations and that something that they would think was irrational. he wanted them to know he didn't think was irrational, the way nixon try dodd it. the other one is itz hour.

eisenhower is famous for saying take a hard line and bluffing. but one reason that people believed that eisenhower believed he wasn't bluffing is he would pull back the troops from say korea or somewhere else and then the threat of unleashing a nuke would come out so it would look like he was taking his people out of harm's way and threatening to fire, something like that, but most of all they knew eisenhower, they knew ike -- he had just defeated them, had just basically conquered europe more or less, and he -- he was a guy who was not to be trifled with and i think people understood that. >> i think that the scary thing about trump is we wouldn't necessarily have those troop movements because he doesn't have the experience as commander in chief or as a politician or as someone who's worked in government so, he might not necessarily play those cards before he just drops the bomb. so that's sort of the scary --

one of the thousands of scary things about a potential nuclear war started on twitter. >> and now we're talking about north korea instead of -- i was going to bring up jared kushner's revelation about his private e-mail use and all these other stories that broke during the week. poo veebt, right? we both have young children. is your home a trump-free zone? >> yes. >> you don't talk about politics? >> we use yeuphemisms. >> like what? >> we don't say his this name. the kids know we got a lot of mail from trump when he was running and i was annoyed at the volume of mail, but i don't think they know he's the president. i don't -- they're not -- there's no tension in the house about it. >> so the parents can worry about north korea. >> yeah. >> they're mad at trump wbecaus of the mail. my almost 4-year-old daughter told me sometime during the campaign, she saw a picture of trump and said, oh, that's donald trump, we don't like him because he snds us a lot of

mail. that's about the extent of it. >> i haven't heard that one. i've heard a lot of others. thanks for being here. jo after the break, breaking news on the nfl, the latest on a anthem controversy. has it spun so far off the original purpose we're forgetting why athletes are take agni in the first place? we'll talk about that after the break. when heartburn hits, fight back fast with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪ tum -tum -tum -tum smoothies! only from tums

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wul week long president trump reinforced his view nfl players should stand for the national anthem. in lon didn't, mos did but three dolphins players kneeled on the sidelines. a source familiar with the

matter tells me many of the players who kneeled last week in protest of trump's comments about the league will stand this week or at least planning to stand at today's games. but they'll be standing out of respect for our country and military, not out of respect for trump. that's a quote from an nfl source. now, by covering these protests on television or in some cases by not showing the northeasterlies on television, is the media losing the thread on how this protest began in the first place? when colin kaepernick took a knee this time last year to protest social injustice and racism. let's talk about it with leslie lowery, a national reporter for "the national post," and jason gay, a sports columnist for the "wall street journal" wooj. leslie, have journalists and players lost the plot? >> i'm not sure the players have, but i think there's been space here where the owners as well as the league by and large with the assistance of the president have been able to pivot this to a conversation that's no longer about what colin kaepernick was talk about.

we've seen conversations about unity and team and sports and the language we use often when frankly it has nothing do with what colin kaepernick was talking about or many of the players who kneeled in response. for those of us in the media, this becomes difficult because you have to coffer this at various levels. there is a real and important angle to be covered talking about the first amendment and the president of the united states calling for a private corporation to fire its employees for political speech. that's real, right? the president of the united states said in tweets it's real, we have to talk and write about this. that said, i do think it's our responsibility, incumbent upon us, to continue having conversations, continue doing journalism about issues of racial disparity and policing, issues within the criminal justice system. there was a great piece today in the minnesota "star tribune" about police officers convicted of major crimes who are still working in minnesota. they found 140 of them. unfortunately, we're having a segment about the president and his tweets and not that type of work. no fault of yours, we have to cover that, but i think it's important that we continue having conversations about the core issues here, which are

police and government accountability. >> it seems to me some of the players are trying to find ways to make statements even if they're standing during anthem. we saw the saints kneeling before the anthem today, for example. do you agree, jason, here in new york with me that there's a first amendment issue involved here? >> i don't think there's necessarily a first amendment issue literally with regard to the nfl. it is a private corporation, they do have restrictions that they can choose to do -- >> employers can restrict employees' speech. >> they have not den that, and i think it's certainly think that broadly speaking when you consider the cultural impact of the nfl, they're fully, you know, allowed to g out and do this. we of soon them not restricted at all. i think what leslie is talking about here is very true, what we of soon in the last week is the issue getting muddled. you've soon this protest version where players come out, they kneel, they knelt with their owner, jerry jones, the dallas cowboys, this message of unity, very apart from what kaepernick

was talking about when he began his protest more than a year ago. this issue has migratedite quite a bit. >> what about what donald trump said about the nielsen ratings, the nfl ratings way down implying because of the anthem protest. is that true? >> i don't think that's true at all. there are people cutting the cord, people move eight way from pay cable television for many years. you know, even if you didn't watch espn you were paying for it so, i think a lot of people are cutting that cord. that's what's really contributing to the declines. brians, there are mirroring declines happening across the dial like nickelodeon or any other channels. what accounts for that? there's no controversy similar to this. >> a lot of broadcast dramas and comedies that debuted this week saw ratings declines from the prior year. systemic issues on viewership as more watch on demand instead of live. for the president to say rate

rgs massive lu down, he's misleading folks. >> he's looking at the issue in isolation and probably a bit of self-servedness too. >> leslie, does this remain a huge national news story for the foreseeable future? >> one of the things that helps determine that is whether or not the president continues tweeting. >> do we give him too much power, wes? his tweets? >> he's the president of the united states. i would love to say we should ignore what he's tweeting or saying, but i think we also have to take him seriously. he is the most powerful person in the world. when he's throwing off missives, whether it be about rex tillerson and north korea or whether it be about nfl players, i think we have to take it seriously. and we have to -- because history is going to. history is not going to say this is that week where the president was range tweeting about colin kaepernick. this will be about the time the president of the united states wielded his power, you know, to

in backlash to political speech he didn't like. right in there is actually some weight to these things and even though we get them so often, it's so frequent we start to lose that, this is real. you know, this week we had -- the president of the united states attacked the mayor of san juan, puerto rico, and last i checked i don't know if they've even spoken to each other, so this is a mayor in the midst of a crisis, not necessarily getting a phone call but getting beat up on twit fwir president. this is real. history will remember this. so we have to cover these stories. your original question, i think we'll likely see players demonstrate and protest. will it be at the level we saw last week with these kind of unity celebrations? no. but that's probably a good thing. >> wes, jason, thank for being here. sorry i'm out of time. i have a big story up next talking about facebook, russia, and fake news. what we heard from mark zuckerberg this week, how it lines up with what facebook is doing, trying to crack down on foreign meddling. we'll have all the details after this.

facebook claims the company is working hard to figure out how to stop what happened last year where russian hackers were able to buy ads on a platform, target american voters with a ma variety of messages. i view this partly as media literacy and tech literacy problem. all of us as voters or citizens have to recognize those ads in the corner of the screen, they're targeted to us on an individual basis, and they could be coming from foreign actors, meddlers,ing to influence you even on who you'll vote for. lots to talk about here. you've broken a lot of news in the past week about facebook and twitter, these companies trying to come to grips with how their platforms were misused by these

russian hackers. what do you think is most important now looking forward in this story? >> well, look, first and foremost, you know, the big take-away i've had from our reporting over the course of the last week is understanding how to think about this. russian meddling is so much bigger than the 2016 campaign. it's really a question about russians trying to wage an information war in our society, trying to pit us against one another, sow political discord, and they have taken advantage of social media networks like facebook, like twitter. we're likely to see they've used google as well. google is conducting its own internal investigation to see what kit present to congress. they're using these platforms to try to divide us so, when we reported earlier this week there was a black activist account that was really backed by russians, when we reported that there were black lives matter ads that were targeted to the cities of baltimore and ferguson but were actually coming from russia, the point here is to try

and sow discord, pit americans against one another, make democracy look weak in the eyes of americans, make democracy look weak in the eyes of pro-democracy activist in russia. and, you know, thinking about how we go forward, you bring up the point of media literacy, so often when i talk with the folks who have been researching this for a very long time, they always talk about the question of media literacy. how do we teach americans to be able to recognize real news versus fake news? not what the president says is real news versus fake news but actual real news first fake news because this problem is so big, what facebook and twitter have shown so far is the tip of the tip of the iceberg so, it's really -- the onus is going to be on citizens to understand how to read and consume news in the years ahead. >> you brought up fake news. let's define it since the president has exploited and reappropriated the term, fake

news, julia, meaning stories that are made up designed to deceive you, classic example from the election being the pope has endorsed donald trump. now, do we have any sense that some of these stories, these made-up stories from the election, were linked to russia? we know some of them were written by americans just trying to make a quick buck. >> right. i think issue is bigger than russian story. that's one part of it. this truth platform, this microtargeting, means anyone can spread lies and misinformation. for instance, politicians could say one thing to one group of people and another to another. different competing campaign promises, right? >> they already are doing that, aren't they? >> i'm doing a project to try to find out if they are. i think this platform is perfectly designed for information warfare, right? everyone is trying to wage information warfare. i think we have to figure out whether there are more structural ways than just trying to tell people to think critically. we're all subject to being

manipulated. we wouldn't ask people how to figure out ho to assemble their car. we would have regulations about safety and zmoosh i get your point. not just about literacy. >> i don't think it's enough. it's an artifact of the fact people have used information warfare to start trusting our institutions so we're at point where people don't trust anything spop we need to rebuild that trust in a different way. dylan, are question we going to see these facebook ads we of heard about that were targeted? you heard one example about black lives matter messaging. are we going the see these ads for ourselves? >> that is the big unknown, and facebook doesn't want to show these ads, has no intention of showing these ads to the public or at least it hasn't so far. it is handing them over to congress soon, we understand. i think once congress has its hands on them it would like to at least give the impression that it's sort of studying those in a vault outside of the public eye so that it can do due diligence in the same way

special counsel robert mueller is investigating these ads outside of the public eye. brian, you and i both know the way this works. things tend to leak out. things have a way of leaking out into the media, and i think that's what's going to happen here. i just want to touch really quickly on this point about media literacy and about the name of your show, "reliable sources." you know, we talk so often about a crisis of leadership in american politics or even in the world, the media needs people who can come forward and establish a common narrative way there used to be a common narrative many the middle of the 20th century. figures in the media were so authoritative that they crossed partisan lines and sort of penetrate through this fractured media landscape we have that ranges from the far left to the far right. >> julia, are there any of those figures left? >> you, brian, are the first kand dit for that. i think way we get people to

trust these days, things are much more transparent, i'm a big advocate of putting out my data for publishing an analysis, the computer code we used for an analysis. as credible as we can be. >> thank you for being here. nor come in the coming days on the twit teshgs facebook front, and also on google. all of these questions about interference. up next here, an exclusive with colonel steve warren, a longtime military spokesman, who was just let go last month. what happened? stay tuned. how do you chase what you love with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis? do what i did. ask your doctor about humira. it's proven to help relieve pain and protect joints from further irreversible damage in many adults. humira works by targeting and helping to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira has been clinically studied for over 20 years. humira can lower your ability to fight infections,

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reckless, irresponsible, breathtaking, those are the statement comments i'm seeing about president trump's comments. >> wasting his time trying to negotiate with little rocket man. save your energy, rex. we'll do what happens to be done. joining me now for reaction to this, retired u.s. army colonel steve warren. he was a top spokesman at the pentagon until recently. we'll get into that in a moment. first, your reaction to what the president is saying on twitter? >> well, brian, what a way to run foreign policy. what a way to run international affairs. to send some instructions to your secretary of defense via twitter. maybe pick up the telephone and call the secretary of state might be a better way to go, about passing out your guidance on how to deal with this rogue nuclear nation. >> is this also an implicit

critique of the secretary of defense, james mattis, given that mattis, i believe, has been talking about -- he has been talking about diplomacy leading the way. >> well, i think what you see is secretary mattis, secretary tillerson really providing the stability, the thoughtfulness, kind of the sober reasonableness that we need right now. this is a nuclear crisis, brian. and it's something that requires a high level of diplomacy, extraordinary -- sophisticated operations to get us through this legitimate nuclear crisis that we see here. and i think we see the secretary of defense, secretary of state working closely. we see them, having together, decided that diplomacy should lead this. the alternative is far worse and we see them trying to move this into the right place. >> originally we booked you on the program to talk about

pentagon press access. there have been new restrictions on journalist there is. tell me what's happened. >> it's difficult to really call them restrictions. >> okay. >> what we've seen -- there's been reporting inside the beltway press that has talked about less access. this is reporters complaining that they haven't been able to get the secretary of defense to stand behind the podium and deliver press conferences this is reporters noting that there have been fewer reporters invited on the secretary of defense's international trips he takes around the world. so the press are a little bit concerned that their access to senior policymakers and general officers is being restricted. whether or not it is kind of still remains to be seen. i think it needs to shake out a little bit more. what we have to understand here, i think, is that, you know, the

secretary of defense is in a very tight spot. he's walking a very tightrope. on one hand, his positive, the president, has declared that the press is the enemy of the people. but on the other hand i think secretary mattis understands the pentagon is responsible for more than half a trillion dollars every year. there's million american sons and daughters in harm's way whether it's in war or war-in-training. we're in harm's way. the sengt understands he's responsible for all that have and has a responsibility -- really an obligation to explain to those mothers and fathers, to explain to those tax papayers what that's being used for. he has a tough thing to balance there.

>> agreed. thanks for being here. please come back soon. we'll make more time. before we go, i want to mention the deaths of two legends. magazine industry is saying good-bye to two titans this week. first, hugh hefner. his controversial, famous magazine "playboy" set off a cultural revolution. you might not know about hefner, he championed the first amendment and gave a platform to some of the country's most celebrated writers. also new this morning, simon newhouse has died, chairman meritus of conde naste. we'll have the latest on newhouse's death. in tonight's reliable sources newsletter. sign up at reliable sources.com. patrick woke up with back pain.

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tipping point. president trump unleashes on a puerto rican mayor who called him out. >> we are dying and you are killing us with the inefficiency. >> and as the crisis worsens, the president is applauding the government response. >> it's amazing the job we have done in puerto rico. >> will he change his tune after