defend themselves violently, if necessary. >> the president has fired top officials on twitter, made destabilizing foreign policy announcement on twitter, has even potentially obstructed justice on twitter, but with his 56 million twitter followers, 40,000 tweets and counting it seems the creature cannot be stopped. >> merry christmas, fareed zakaria starts right now. this is "gps," the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. today on the show a bombshell from the pentagon, defense secretary james mattis announces his resignation, just a day after we learned president trump intends to pull all american troops out of syria. first mcmaster, then kelly, now

mattis. where have all of trump's generals gone and what does their departure mean for american foreign policy? i will ask richard haas to make sense of all of it. and we'll take a step back from the apparent onslaught of bad news. is the current situation in america and europe, around the world, as bad as many think? or are we, in fact, living in one of the most prolific productive safe times in history? steven pinker versus niall ferguson. finally, i will introduce you to a young woman whom you will surely want to meet. >> we have run out of excuses and we are running out of time. we have come here to let you know that change is coming whether you like it or not. >> she's trying to do nothing less than save the world. but first here is my take. emanuel macron has been the

great hope for those who worry that global politics is being dominated for populism, nationalism or racism. in his presidential campaign last year, macron was able to rally france around a message of multi-lateralism. now macron has been humbled by the yellow vest street protests. he was forced to backtrack on some of his reforms and adopt new budget-busting subsidies in an attempt to nullify the mob and there is the mess in britain as it keeps trying and failing to brexit, italy's budgetary woes get worse and the embrace of illegal democracy in hungary and poland continues. it all adds up to a depressing picture of europe and the west. but are things really so gloomy? as "politico's" matthew karnitschnig points out support for the eu is at its highest level in decades and on closer examination while the forces of populism do continue to surge in

tomorrow places mostly the story of the last few months has actually been one of pushback. consider poland and hungary, in many ways the poster children for the populist nationalist movement. in poland efforts to reshape the country's supreme court ignited massive national protests and europe's high court ordered the move to be reversed. on monday warsaw complied and scrapped the law. in hungary the prime minister's latest authoritarian steps changing label laws have triggered widespread protests uniting the nation's top forces as never before. in france macron's demise is premature. his poll numbers are way down but voters prefer him to the far right le pen by a wage margin. he has a five-year term. his party controls the legislature and most analysts agree that his reforms are inevitable if france is to compete for investment and generate growth. he may end up a one-term president but he will have spearheaded the most important changes in france in a

generation. in italy the new coalition government had introduced a populist budget that promised a universal basic income and early retirement only to meet the steely opposition of the european union and it was the populists that blinked. rome retreated from the populist measures and announced a budget conforming to the guidelines set by brussels. britain remains more complicated but the basic story that every time the country comes close to actual brexit it pulls back appalled by the costs. proponents of brexit sold the country a fantasy that it could get the benefits of access to the european union's market without the costs of having to obey its rules. as time passes, more and more britains are coming to realize that they cannot have their cake and eat it, too. finally, look at the united states, where a president who proudly embraces populism and nationalism reigns.

>> i'm a nationalist. okay? >> but in november the opposition democratic party had its strongest gain in the house of representatives since the watergate wave of 1974. perhaps more significant, there are now 17 separate investigations into president trump and his associates, some of which have already produced indictments. and that does not include the series of congressional inquiries certain to begin once the democrats take control of key committees in the house. i don't mean to minimize the populist wave that is still coursing through the west and other parts of the world, but concern should not give way to despair. there are many people in every country who oppose the politics of anger and identity. they are also strong and they need to run fast but not run scared. for more go to cnn.com/fareed and read my "washington post" column this week. and let's get started. ♪ ♪

>> on wednesday we learned of president trump's plans to withdraw american troops from syria. isis, trump claimed in a tweet, has been defeated there. on top of that shock, a bigger one came the next day as secretary of defense james mattis announced his resignation in a letter to the president. in it mattis made his own priorities clear, maintaining alliances, showing respect for allies, using american power to provide for the common defense and to stand up to those nations whose strategic interest are in tension with america's. retired four-star general suggested his views were not aligned with the president. to help make sense of all of this i want to bring in richard haass. haas was director of policy planning in the state department under george w. bush, he is the president on the council of foreign relations and the author of "a world in disarray." richard, let's first talk about the process here because my suspicion is that james mattis

has always known that he and trump had disagreements but that he felt like on the issue of syria and maybe afghanistan he had gone to the president a year ago, he had gotten authorization for a new policy, 2,000 troops, more use of bombs, remember trump used to boast about how they were using bigger bombs in syria, and that they had informed the rest of the world, allies, et cetera, and it's the way in which this policy was just upended with no process, no strategy, no informing allies. my gut is that some part of it was just the chaos of policy making that has gotten to james mattis. >> i think so and i think he made the calculation all along that he was never going to agree with everything. he was traditional and mr. trump is many things, traditional is not one of them. mattis basically said, i'll stay here so long as on balance in the net i'm either accomplishing good things or preventing really bad things from happening. i think what actually happened in the last couple of days is he reassessed and came to the conclusion that whatever he was

accomplishing or preventing it wasn't happening anymore. mr. trump essentially has become not only his own national security adviser, he has also become his own secretaries of defense. >> you saw that reserve that mattis had, if you remember that early meeting of the cabinet where trump forced cabinet officials to go around almost in a north korea fashion pledging fealty and loyalty to him and mattis was the one who refused. he said it's an honor to serve the american people and lead the armed services. he made no reference to trump. again, in this letter of resignation to me the most interesting part is the omission. he doesn't thank trump personally. >> no, again, he ended it with a reference to the men and women in uniform. he was in that sense true to himself. there were so many signals in this letter. this is one of those great things that historians will look over. what i liked about it, it's so rare in washington where people actually resign and then resign on matters of principle and policy and it wasn't ad hominum,

it wasn't small, it was big. he was basically saying we are not on the same page. you might as well have somebody who is on the same page as you because you sure as hell are not listening to me and then he spelled out his differences. big things, fundamental issues of american foreign policy, actually thought that was healthy. >> those issues started at the beginning, again, the story we know, both you and i know that's true is that mattis was alarmed at how trump didn't seem to get the big picture, asked the joint chiefs to arrange a briefing for him in the tank, the joint chiefs kind of facility and laid out for him what the goal of american foreign policy had been for 70 years, which was to build a world of stability based on institutions and alliances, why these were important and how russia and china were trying to destroy that or destabilize that world. at the end of it trump apparently said, i don't buy any of this, and what's interesting is mattis' letter replays that difference of opinion. >> what's also interesting is so many of us kept thinking that somehow what mr. trump would

learn in office, the realities of office, would make him more traditional, would make him more of an establishment foreign policy figure, and guess what, he's not. he has stood by his earlier views. he thinks the costs of american foreign policy and leadership simply aren't worth it, he doesn't see the benefits, he doesn't believe in trade accords. donald trump is an outlier. he is a radical. he is not in the post world war ii foreign policy tradition of the united states and what i think we've seen in the last couple of days is further evidence that he is not going to change. >> and it's felt like a kind of isolationism where he was saying we're just going to get out, but we have a big stick if anyone does anything to us. it reminds me of that book that was written in the council by walter russell meade under your tutelage where he -- where meade talks about jacksonian tradition, this is andrew jackson. we're isolationists but if you come after us we have a big stick, we will beat you up and retreat back home.

>> it's a narrow conception of american views in the world. he was also saying if you don't come after us directly and go after others, have at it, boys. it's such a narrow view of the potential of the world to have adverse affects on the united states and it almost undermines his own philosophy. if you believe in making america great again it's not obvious to me how that can happen in a world that's unraveling. mr. trump seems unable to see that connection. >> let's talk about the specifics. the syria decision. i have never thought the u.s. has had a very solid strategy in syria, we basically -- we don't have a team to back. the russians, the iranians, they have a team to back, they have assad, this he back him, he's got real power and with some legitimacy in the region, a brutal dictator. we don't. we are looking around so we keep playing the game with some hope. will it matter that much that we take these 2,000 troops out? >> it will matter in the narrow counterterrorism effort.

the idea that you've defeated terrorists and they go away, that's not the way it works. they will reconstitute themselves so that will come back. that will be a decision either he or his successor will rue. the american people could pay a price for it. in terms of the future, long ago we had accommodated ourselves to the reality that this government, this regime, wasn't going anywhere. the question now i think is whether the united states and others can use the incentive of economic help for rebuilding to try to bring about a degree of political reform, a bit of restraint on the part of mr. assad before he and others settle any scores. the fact that we don't have 2,000 troops there obviously reduces our leverage. >> afghanistan, reports are that we're going to drop by 50%. that worries me because it feels like afghanistan is actually a moderate success in that we have kept the country sort of together. >> right. >> and what i worry about is if we destabilize the government,

that is the case where we know who will take advantage, the chinese have been waiting to have greater and greater control of afghanistan. >> you will see -- basically the pakistanis, the chinese -- our goal in afghanistan can't be who win. we are not going to turn the place into switzerland but simply to keep it from falling apart because we saw what happened just before 9/11 when that happened. unfortunately we are on a trajectory where the possibility of syria's back sliding is real and, again, we can't insulate ourselves from that. i don't understand why it's so difficult for people to understand that what happens elsewhere can sooner or later or will sooner or later affect the quality and security and prosperity of life here. i would have thought 9/11 was enough of a class in that, but i'm afraid we may have to basically learn that experience again the hard way. >> one final thought. you've worked in four administrations and i'm told that a third of the spots at the nsc are empty, something like

that in the national economic council, key white house positions are not being filled. it feels like really a kind of chaotic and very thinly staffed white house. >> it feels that way because it is. and then mr. trump doesn't -- he tends not to use what little staff he has. i think one of the lessons of the last week or so is process matters. process is there to protect. it's meant to inform people, to say, hey, if you do this, there's a decent chance this will come of it. are you sure you want to do that? by not having the place staffed up, by not using the staff that you do have, by essentially flying by your gut the united states dramatically increases the odds that bad decisions will be taken and then there won't be any serious execution or implementation. government is hard. foreign policy is hard. particularly in this world where so many others have such power. and the idea that a president wouldn't totally staff himself up and use the resources around him from the cia to the pentagon to the state department, it's like going to a card table and basically saying don't deal me

all the cards, i'm prepared to play five card stud with only three cards. not a very smart way to play the game. >> richard haass, pleasure having you on. >> thank you. it may seem like a frightening time for america and the world, but is it really? is it perhaps actually the greatest time to be alive? are those two options in conflict? two terrific scholars, niall ferguson and steve pinker have a discussion and a debate when we come back. there are so many toothpastes out there which one should i use? choose one that takes care of your gums and enamel. crest gum & enamel repair cleans below the gum line and helps repair weakened enamel. gum & enamel repair, from crest.

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now for a moment let's put aside the details of border walls and shutdowns, threats of syria and north korea, nuclear weapons, ar-15s, is that shrinking sea ice, rising ebola infections and looks at the big picture of the world today. are we in a dark moment as it may seem to you if you read the front page of most newspapers or spend a few minutes on twitter on any given day, or are we in one of the best periods in all of humanity, where a few bad trends overshadow all the good news? well, it's a big crucial debate and we are going to have it here today. steven pinker is a professor of psychology at harvard and a best selling author, perhaps best known for his 2011 book "the better angels of our nature," and niall ferguson is a senior fellow and also a best selling author, his latest is "the square and the tower." two terrific scholars. i'm delighted to have you both.

steven, let me start with you. one you feel as how that there's almost a systematic way in which we ignore good news and overemphasis bad news in the media. explain what you mean. >> well, the nature of journalism is going to emphasize the negative because bad things can happen quickly, but good things aren't built in a day and they can creep up on us by stealth. if something explodes, if there is a shooting, if a building collapses, that's news, but if the global extreme poverty rate declines by a few percentage points there's never a thursday in october in which it happens in which it makes the headlines, but when you track the data year by year, you see that the world can be transformed and there's never a point at which it makes the news. >> and, steve, your thesis as i understand you have two books that essentially make this point with a lot of detail. you think we are living in the

most peaceful, prosperous and progressive, you know, in the sense of greater and greater rights for more and more people in human history, correct? >> yeah, and it's not a matter of what i think, it's what the data shows. now, of course, these improvements don't happen inexorably year after year after year, there are always wiggles and bumps, sometimes there are nasty surprises, but the overall trend over the decades, over the centuries is for every measure of human well being to improve. >> niall ferguson, what is your response to that? >> well, i don't violently disagree with steve that the world is a good deal better at the end of 2018 than it was 100 years ago or for that matter 50 years ago, there have been enormous improvements in most economic measures, even in equality which is something that people worry about a lot has actually gone down global globally not least because of

the extraordinary economic miracle in the world's most populous country, china. where i disagree with steve is the inference that he draws about the future because you could equally well have published a book a little -- along the same lines as steve's in, say, 1911 and it would have been true that the world was significantly better in 1911 than it had been in 1811, but that wouldn't have been a reason to be naively optimistic about the future because you were just three years away from cataclysm in the form of world war i. the middle decades of the 20th centuries were catastrophic for really large proportions of humanity. so i think the right way to think about this is that history does have some very pleasing trend lines when it comes to economic welfare and indeed to conflict, another thing that steve emphasizes, but history

teaches us to watch out for sudden discontinuities and in a highly networked, highly integrated world of the sort that we've built in the last 30 years, there are enormous vulnerabilities. so the story could change from a good news story to a bad news story in a day, and that would not be fake news if it were a global pandemic of the sort that the world was struck by at the end of the first world war. i don't entirely agree with steve in the sense that sometimes there really is bad news and history doesn't necessarily prepare you for it. >> steve, let me pick up on the point niall was making. in 1911 there was also a book written "the great illusion" in which it was said essentially war will never happen again. >> he did not say that. >> he said that he thought it would be so expensive that it wouldn't pay -- >> he was right. >> it was read by many people just to mean that wars are not going to break out.

and the point is you had world war i, you had the great flu epidemic in which more people died than in many countries in world war i, you had the great depression, you had stalin and his madness, you had the second world war and then you had mao and his madness. so from 1914 to 1954 let's say it certainly looks like it was a pretty bleak period. >> it did. by the way, normal angel did not predict that war could not happen, he just predicted -- >> many people read the book and said that, you know -- because it represented what seemed like a century of peace and progress that had taken place. >> well, only if you look at certain parts of europe. it wasn't so peaceful in the united states which had the worst war in its history, the civil war, it wasn't so peaceful in china which had the worst civil war in human history, not so peaceful in southern africa -- >> but then you're making my point.

i'm not -- the point i'm trying to make is that despite that illusion of peace the next 30 years proved to be war-filled, violent, bloody -- >> yes, and it can happen and i'm not predicting that it can't happen, no one could predict that, but of course one could also make predictions of impending doom repeatedly, that also turned out to be false, if you pick, for example, predictions that i grew up with that world war iii between the united states and the soviet union was inevitable, it would be a nuclear war. if you looked at predictions after 9/11 that were going to be weekly massive terrorist attacks that shoulder launched missiles were going to shoot planes out of the sky, there were going to be massive explosions at football matches, if you look at predictions in the early '90s that a new generation of super predators was going to shoot the crime rate up just before it plunged. you can have false predictions in both directions.

i'm not making a prediction that these positive trends will necessarily continue, but we should inform our predictions by which way trend lines have been going, while being aware of the possibility of nasty surprises. >> we have to take a break. when we come back i will ask niall ferguson to make the best prediction he can about the future.

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and we are back with steven pinker and niall ferguson talking about the world, is it falling to pieces or better than ever? niall, let me ask you to give us a sense of where you think the world is going because you and i have had this debate while i was taking steve pinker's side in toronto and i recall some of the points you were making, which i thought were quite valid which was if you look at the world from the point of view of the state of democracy, there seems to be a retreat both in important countries and smaller countries. if you look at the support for kind of international order, what was often called the liberal international order, that seems to be declining, the

you see the rise of nationalism, populism. many political trend lines don't seem as positive as they might have ten years ago. correct? >> i think there's some truth in what you say, fareed, though i'm careful in saying that there are very clear trends with respect to, say, democracy. the trend that i'm most interested in which i think has the greatest potential to disrupt democratic and undemocratic societies is our trend towards being a networked world. one of the argument i made in "the square in the tower" i think has been vindicated that by creating a highly integrated network online with giant network platforms such as facebook and google, we've created a much less stable public sphere in which fake news and extreme views are, in fact, pro liverated because of the way that the algorithms work in the business models of these companies. now, that's a trend that is disrupting all kinds of different countries, from the united states all the way to myanmar in ways that i think are

actually quite troubling. i don't think we have a good answer to the question what do we do to preserve democracy and the rule of law in an age of institutionalized fake news on social media. that seems to me a big worry and coming back to the discussion we had a moment ago with steve, if you're asking the question what could possibly go wrong with this best of all possible worlds, the thing that i think is most likely to go wrong is that the unintended consequences integrated platforms are likely to be disruptive in a whole range of dimensions, disrupting our politics, potentially also disrupting financial markets if you think about some of the impacts that technology can have there, and ultimately even disrupting the climate of the planet. it wouldn't take much to derail the trend lines that steve talks about in his books and that's why i'm fascinated by the one

law of history that really matters and that's the law of unintended consequences. nobody who built facebook expected that it would be a decisive variable in the election of donald trump, but it was. >> that is certainly true, although whenever there is a new medium such as the printing press there is often a period of a wild west where stories, conspiracy theories proliver ate until the system recalibrates and mounts an immune response and figures out how to control it. we haven't done that yet with the rise of social media, but when the printing press originated there were fake books of the bible being disseminated, we had the protocols of the elders of zion which blamed the world's problems on jewish conspiracy, there was massive plagiarism, fake authors. eventually a regime settled in place that got rid of the worst excesses. it remains to be seen whether we will fail to implement that in the case of social media.

>> steve, that was after 130 years of religious conflict that the printing press undoubtedly fueled. it took a long time to get from martin luther to the peace of west failure. i think one of the lessons of our time is that that analogy that you just made is very good that in many ways the personal computer and internet have done the same to our era as the printing press did to the 16th and 17th centuries, but that's a disquieting thing because it really did produce polarization, epidemics of crazy ideas. you didn't mention the best example which is the idea that witches live amongst us which went completely viral on both sides of the atlantic and led to thousands of people being horribly killed for absolutely no good reason. that seems to me a reason to be quite cautious about where we're going from here. it may not be 130 years of religious conflict, but we could certainly have, say, 13 years of really bitter ideological political conflict with the potential that it shades over from verbal violence which we

currently have plenty of on the internet to actual violence. that's a reason to worry, i think. steve's great peril is that one day future historians will look back and they will cite steve pinker the way historians today cite normal angel as somebody who was broadly speaking too confident in the trends and underestimated the black swan low probability, high impact events that can completely change the historical trajectory. >> i have to give you a short response. will you be cited like norman angel. >> not to anyone who reads me because i do talk about distributions, low probability, high impact events and, yes, they can occur. again, norman angell did not predict that war was impossible, just that it would be ruinous and he was right. >> on that note, good news and bad news. i have to thank both of you, it was a fascinating discussion, wonderful way to close out the

year. thank you both. next on "gps," president trump says he's not building an ugly concrete wall on the mexican border. no, he tweeted, he plans to build a wall of artistically designed steel slats. it will he says be beautiful, but ugly or beautiful, what can the world teach us about walls and whether or not they work? we have the facts when we come back. ♪ it is such a good time to kiss ♪

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now for our what in the world segment. well, here we are, the government has ground to a halt over trump's insistence on a big, beautiful border wall. you might consider the president's fixation singular or even quixotic, but trump is hardly alone in this quest. across the world we are in an age of walls which is the subject and title of a new book by tim marshall. at the end of the cold war there were only 15 border walls around the world, after 2000 the number spiked and by 2016 there were 70 according to elizabeth valet, a professor at the university of quebec at montreal. the reason shouldn't be hard to fathom. they include unprecedented levels of migration and the conflict in the middle east. there is the rise of national leaders eager to fence off their countries some of whom have succeeded. the question is do these walls work?

well, sometimes they do. take the massive wall that separates the west bank from israel, it's forbidding, made of 25 foot tall concrete slabs and electrified fencing. trump has admired it publicly. construction began in 2002 after a rash of suicide attacks from the west bank. suicide attacks did fall from 60 in 2002 to just five in 2006 according to the political scientist ron hassner and jason whittenburg. fatalities similarly plunged and have stayed down. let's look at an older example. the 1,700 mile long wall made of sand that morocco built along the disputed territory of the western sahara. construction began in 1980 to defend against the sahari people who reject morocco's claim on the territory. the wall is flanked by land

mines, hundreds of soldiers and morocco did gain the upper hand and then violence reduced by 1991 when the u.n. brokered a peace deal. take the fences along hungary's borders built in late 2015, the pack of the migrant crisis. within days of hungary closing the border with croatia migrant arrivals virtually ceased, the "washington post" notes. but whether or not the walls achieved their narrow objectives should not be the only criteria used to evaluate them. as after as marshall notes the berlin wall technically succeeded, it stemmed mass desertions of east germans but also turned a country into a prison. in israel the suicide attacks have come down but the wall has also deepened palestinian dis affection. the moroccan wall stemmed violence but is estimated to have cost 40% of the country's gdp to build and defend. the fences compelled others to follow suit mark the idea of an open europe with creeping divisions.

so what bearing does all this have on trump's wall? well, a colossal expense, alienating neighbors, promoting divisions, trump's wall seems to have most of the costs and few of the benefits of these examples. unlike in israel and morocco, there hasn't been any real threat of terrorism coming from the southern border since 9/11 and net migration from mexico has been zero for years now. the wall is geographically implausible, the terrain at parts of the border would make its construction all but impossible and for all these reasons a majority of americans oppose trump's wall. and they are right. up next, i saw a video this week that stopped me in my tracks. a young woman from sweden making a passionate plea for the world to finally do something about climate change. >> we have run out of excuses and we are running out of time. >> she will join me here in the global public square in just a moment.

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you are never too small to make a difference. that is what a brave and powerful 15-year-old said to the assembled world leaders and other dignitaries and ngos at the climate conference in poland. she is a young woman from sweden who decided to make it her life's mission to save the world from climate change. listen to her speak truth to power as she looks to the future. >> the year 2078, i will celebrate my 75th birthday. if i have children, maybe they will spend that day with me and maybe they will ask me about you. maybe they will ask why you didn't do anything while there was still time to act. you say you love your children

above all else and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes. >> greta went on to tell the grown ups, you are not mature enough to it like it is. she is mature enough to do so and she joins me now from stockholm, sweden. thanks for joining us, greta. >> thank you. >> you first came to our attention at least when you began to skip many, many days of school, i think it was three weeks in all. you went and protested outside sweden's parliament. what made you think of doing that? >> i got the idea from -- there were a few youths in the usa that refused to go to school because of the school shootings and someone i knew said what if children did that for the climate. i thought that was a very good idea. i decided i was going to do

that. i don't know is doing anything and nothing is happening. i guess i have to do something. >> it was the parkland shooting in florida and the children who decided to protest in that way that in a sense inspired you. when you decided you wanted to do something like this, you talked to your parents. did they agree or how did you proceed? >> i told them and they said are you sure that's a good idea? isn't there anything else you can do to make your voice heard? i said no, this is what i'm going to do and they said we are not going to support you. you have to do this alone if you are going to do this because they are parents and they could not support this. >> what did they mean not support it? they couldn't support taking time off from school? they felt that was inappropriate? >> yes. a parent's duty is to make sure

their child goes to school and they can't support that i am skipping class like this. >> what made you decide that this was going to be the thing thaw wanted to do? have you always been looking for a cause and have you always felt like you wanted to make a difference in the world or is it that climate change strikes you as so big you felt moved by that? >> yes. the climate crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. if we don't do anything right now, we are screwed. i thought i wanted to be able when i grow up to say i did what i could back then. it is my moral duty to do what i can. i just decided to do it because there is nothing i have to lose. >> you are not just talking about it, but as we say in the united states, you are also

walking the walk. you have changed your lifestyle to try to have as low an impact as you can both in terms of climate and sustainability. outline some of those measures. >> yeah, i have stopped flying. i have stopped eating meat and dairy and i have stopped consuming and buying new things. >> we are coming up on christmas and new year. you are not getting any new things as gifts? >> no. not me. my parents don't get me many presents because i don't want many presents. >> what would you say to people, particularly in places like the united states? what's your message to the adults in the room, as it were? >> my message to the people in general is that we have to understand the emergency of this situation and we need to realize

that our political leaders have failed us. we must make our voices heard and to put pressure on the people in power and say to them that we are not going to allow this to continue anymore. we young people need to say that we must hold the older generations accountable for the mess they created and expect us to live with and say to them that you cannot continue risking our future like this. we need to get angry and we need to transform that anger into action. >> i admire your conviction and your courage. greta, it's a pleasure to have you on. >> thank you. it's a pleasure to be on. >> next sunday on our time, my latest documentary ies.

presidents under fire. you won't want to miss it. happy holidays and happy new year and see you in 2019. -here comes the rain.

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♪ mom. ♪ hello, everywhere and thank you so much for joining me. i'm fredricka whitfield. we begin with breaking news. president trump names a new acting secretary, tweeting that deputy defense secretary patrick shanahan will begin his new role on january 1st. he takes over for james matic who resigned in protest of the president's decision to pull u.s.