the front, you spend 51. >> oh. hi, frank. >> hey, goldie. sorry to bother you. i'm looking for those reports from yesterday. >> they're already on your desk, frank. >> of course they are. got them right here. hi, frank. >> easily isolate phone calls to the driver's seat and the all new three row infiniti qx80. celebrate exceptional offers on the 2025 qx80 during the infiniti once in a wintertime event at your local infiniti retailer. >> when you've been hurt in an accident, hiring the right attorney can mean the difference between winning $10,000 or $10 million. call the firm that wins big. call sweet james. >> announcer: "this week" with george stephanopoulos starts right now. >> george: mysterious drones. >> we haven't seen any indication thus far that there's a public safety risk.

>> george: concerns grow over flying objects spotted in the northeast. lawmakers demand more federal action. >> the most important thing right now is the safety and security of our communities. >> george: we take it to homeland security secretary alejandro mayorkas, and former new jersey governor chris christie. new syria. celebrations after assad's ouster with one missing american headed home. the search continues for austin tice. >> we're determined to find him and bring him home. >> george: james longman reports from syria. closing ranks. >> we have some great people up there. we have some of the most successful people in the country. >> george: senate republicans rally behind donald trump's cabinet picks as chris wray resigns clearing the way for a loyalist. >> this is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray. >> we look forward to a very smooth transition and i'll be ready to go on day one. >> george: senators eric schmitt and adam schiff join us.

plus analysis from our powerhouse round table. and -- >> the human intelligence that rivals human intelligence is a very big deal. >> george: and artificial intelligence revolutionizing our world. as trump looks to revitalize big tech, eric schmidt on his new book "genesis" and the future of a.i. good morning, and welcome to "this week." in its final weeks, the biden administration is facing questions over mysterious flights over the night skies along the east coast. reports of unidentified aircraft over the state of new jersey have been popping up for weeks. reports of drone sightings have spread from connecticut to virginia. federal officials say there's little to worry about, but there's no known foreign connection to the objects and that many of them are traditional manned aircraft, but that answer has not satisfied state and local officials and citizens worried about privacy and security. the homeland security secretary

will join us in a moment. transportation correspondent gio benitez starts us off. >> reporter: this weekend, more suspected drone sightings across the east coast. >> what the heck? >> reporter: reports of aircraft swarming the sky are sparking security fears, alarm, and frustration. >> and it scares the bejesus out of me. we have to stop this problem or and we have to solve this problem now. >> reporter: after this springing up four weeks ago, repeated apparent drones have set off growing concerns. >> they keep coming and i've seen -- i don't even know how many i've seen today. >> reporter: with aircraft showing up over towns and on sites. stewart airport in new york temporarily closing its runways after multiple reported drone sightings near the airport with the state's governor kathy hochul saying in a statement, this has gone too far. federal officials this week pushing for more information from the biden administration. >> the fbi should be standing at the podium at the department of homeland security and briefing the public and explaining to

them what these drones are. >> the lack of information is absolutely unacceptable. >> reporter: newly sworn in new jersey senator andy kim posting these videos on x while investigating the suspected drones himself alongside police. >> we're counting oftentimes five, six, seven or more at any given time. >> reporter: before posting again saturday to say further analysis led him to conclude that most of the possible drone sightings were almost certainly planes, but the white house insisting that the risk from the aircrafts remains low. >> we have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public safety threat, or have a foreign nexus. it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully. >> reporter: with the white house's reassurances failing to satisfy some local officials -- >> they're either lying or they're incompetent or they're both. >> we know what an airplane looks like. we know what a helicopter looks like.

i'm an acoustical engineer. i have been measuring noises for 30 years. i know what a helicopter sounds like. these are not that. >> george: thanks to gio benitez for that. let's bring in alejandro mayorkas. mr. secretary, thank you for joining us this morning. can you clear up the confusion here? >> absolutely, george, and thank you very much for having me. there's no question that people are seeing drones, and i want to assure the american public that we in the federal government have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the new jersey state police in addressing the drone sightings. some of those drone sightings are, in fact, drones. some are manned aircraft that are commonly mistaken for drones, and we do see duplicative reporting, but there's no question drones are being sighted. let me set the record straight here, george. there are thousands of drones flown every day in the united

states, recreational drones, commercial drones. that is the reality, and in september of 2023, the federal aviation administration, the faa, changed the rules so that drones could fly at night, and that may be one of the reasons why now people are seeing more drones than they did before, especially from dawn to dusk, and so that is the reality, but i want to assure the american public that we are on it. we are working in close coordination with state and local authorities, and it is critical as we all have said, for a number of years that we need from congress, additional authorities to address the drone situation. our authorities currently are limited, and they are set to expire. we need them extended and expanded. >> george: what exactly do you need? >> we want state and local authorities to also have the ability to counter drone

activity under federal supervision. that is one important element that we have requested, and we've heard it echoed by the state and local officials themselves. >> george: you know, president-elect trump has put out a post on this. i want to put it up on the screen right now. he says, mystery drone sightings all over the country. can this really be happening without our government's knowledge? i don't think so. let the public know, and now. otherwise, shoot them down. your response? >> well, we are aware of the drone sightings as i've said. i think there are more than 8,000 drones flown every day in the united states. with respect to the ability to incapacitate those drones, we are limited in our authorities. we have certain agencies within the department of homeland security that can do that, and outside our department, but we need those authorities expanded as well. >> george: are there any legitimate national security concerns here? for example, have you seen any evidence at all, especially in

these recent sightings in the northeast of any kind of foreign involvement? >> we have not seen any foreign -- we know of, no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the northeast, and we are vigilant in investigating this matter. the department of homeland security with the federal bureau of investigation in the lead. >> george: but there have been concerns in the past, in fact, a chinese national was arrested in california this week, allegedly for flying a drone over vandenberg air force base last year. you had drone flights over langley air force base in virginia over a nuclear facility in nevada. so what is the national security concern right now? >> well, when a drone is flown over restricted air space, we act very, very swiftly, and, in fact, when an individual in california flew a drone over restricted air space, that

individual was identified, apprehended and is being charged and we act as swiftly as possible when an individual does fly a drone over restricted air space, and violates the rules. you know, there are, george, more than 1 million drones registered in the united states. >> george: that's an awful lot, but bottom line, you're saying americans have nothing to worry about? >> look. it is our job to be vigilant in the federal government with our state and local partners on behalf of the american public, and we can assure their safety by reason of that vigilance. we've deployed personnel, technology, and if there is any reason for concern, if we identify any foreign involvement or criminal activity, we will communicate with the american public accordingly. right now, we are not aware of any. if we become aware of any, we will communicate accordingly,

and take appropriate action. >> george: secretary mayorkas, thank you for your time this morning. >> thank you, george. >> george: joined now by chris christie, former new jersey governor. welcome back. >> thank you, george. >> george: you're a new jersey resident. have you seen any drones? >> yeah. two mornings ago over my house at 6:15 in the morning, saw them myself. so did my wife, and so yeah. they're there, and i have been traveling around new jersey as i normally do all week, and i can't tell you the number of people who have come up to me concerned about it, and that is -- >> george: is this a mass hysteria of some sort? >> here's why, george, because of answers like the secretary just gave. they're not answering the questions. >> george: he said they're monitoring it. they haven't seen any unusual activity, and they need more authority. >> let me tell you something. i agree they need more authority, but to not say this is -- to say this is not unusual

activity, is just wrong. i lived in new jersey my whole life. this is the first time that i've noticed drones over my house, and i was in a -- in a restaurant in monmouth county on friday night. i had people at the bar coming up to me and saying, governor murphy won't tell me anything. the president won't tell me anything. do you know? well, i don't know, but i will tell you this. i think this is what happens in our society now, george, when -- because we're used to having things so rapidly. if you don't fill that vacuum, then all the conspiracy theories get filled in there. you've got people like congressmen saying there's an iranian mothership off the coast of new jersey. >> george: not true. >> not true, and provably not true. he has had to back off that. you can't have conspiracy theories filling the space, but the biden administration and state authorities have to be more vocal and let people know exactly what they're doing. the interview this morning of a bit of a better step, but i think much too little too late, and when people see this kind of activity, it's a new-ish technology to most people, and they're worried about it and concerned, and they're hearing

about drones being deployed in ukraine all the time as weapons, and us deploying drones as weapons at times. so you can see why people are concerned, and it's a lack of communication from the government at the federal and state level that's at fault here. >> george: you don't think it's this kind of thing where once people become focused on it they actually see things that they wouldn't necessarily paid attention to in the past? >> i think that there's some of that, but i can tell you from the activity -- look. i'm not a conspiracy theorist, and i'm not looking for things. 6:15 yesterday morning, two mornings ago, there was a drone over my house, and i'd never seen anything like that before, and i have been living at that house for over 30 years. >> george: if you were governor right now, what kind of authority would you want to have? >> i would want our state police

to be able to have the authority to bring those drones down and find out why they're doing what they're doing, and of course, you would have to coordinate with the faa, but we do that kind of coordination both when i was u.s. attorney as a law enforcement officer, and as governor all the time to be able to have shared authority, but the states do not have enough authority now to do what they need to do, and what we're going to find, george, is you're going to have individuals acting as drone vigilantes and they'll start taking them down. that's not what they want, because they're now an important part of commerce and law enforcement uses them frequently for surveillance and other things. we need to be able to operate in a safe way and we're not doing that. >> george: i want to ask you about chris wray who resigned this week. you recommended him to president trump. what do you make of his resignation? was it the right thing to do? >> i think it was for chris and for the bureau. look. chris was an anecdote to jim comey and that's why i recommended him. jim was a show horse. chris is a plow horse and he's worked for 7 1/2 years. he got rid of all the comey leadership that i think led to the really awful actions that comey took around the 2016 campaign, and that's why i advocated back in 2016 to president-elect trump that he

should have gotten comey right away. think about this. in the bureau, george, over the last seven years that chris has been in charge, the applications to become a special agent in the fbi have tripled. they're the largest they have been in 50 years. it's because he restored a sense of integrity to that position, and i think what the president-elect is doing is turning this into just any other position that gets changed with administrations, and i don't think that's good for our homeland security. >> george: and what's your assessment of kash patel? >> i don't know him at all, but i saw him give one interview where he said he wanted to eliminate the intelligence capability of the fbi. as u.s. attorney, i worked on two major terrorism cases that we brought against a person trying to broker them to a terrorist group in new jersey, and those who were planning on attacking and killing american service men and women. without intelligence, we would not have been able to stop either of those attacks. i hope he gets smart about what the fbi can and should be doing

because if he's going to be in, he has to still be confirmed. he's going to be the next director of the fbi, and he can't be saying stuff like we're going to eliminate the intelligence capability of the fbi. that just is not the real world. >> george: chris christie, thanks as always. >> thank you. >> george: up next, james longman reports from syria after the fall of assad. we're back in two minutes. the fall of assad. we're back in two minutes. type 2 diabetes? discover the ozempic® tri-zone. i got the power of 3. i lowered my a1c, cv risk, and lost some weight. in studies, the majority of people reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. i'm under 7. ozempic® lowers the risk of major cardiovascular events such as stroke, heart attack, or death in adults also with known heart disease. i'm lowering my risk. and adults lost up to 14 pounds. i lost some weight. ozempic® isn't for type 1 diabetes or children.

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(♪) (♪) voltaren... for long lasting arthritis pain relief. (♪) >> george: it has been just one week since rebel fighters stormed syria, overthrew the regime of bashar al assad, creating a moment of crisis feeling both hope and anxiety. james longman is on the scene near damascus. good morning, james. >> reporter: good morning, george. from a 15-year-old christian mountain village as a new syria emerges. communities up and down this diverse country are wondering what the future will mean for

them. it's been a week since syrians reclaimed their country after five decades of assad rule, joy and relief. >> two generations here. feel good? >> good. >> you feel good? >> reporter: celebrations in every town and city when crowds like these assembled to protest assad's rule. they were crushed with brutal force. now they are free to sing. and in the ancient christian town, they're giving thanks. the monastery here dates back an astonishing 1,500 years. these mountain communities have stood through centuries of turmoil. now they face a new challenge. as soon as assad was gone, the people he made refugees flooded back like youssef. >> he is 29 years old. he left syria when he was 17, and today he's going back. >> reporter: but the return was painful, discovering the brutal reality of assad's syria, and the country's most notorious prison, the remnants of decades of tyranny.

>> they want to show us. they want to show the world proof of assad's brutality, the ropes that hanged probably hundreds, maybe thousands of detainees. >> reporter: and at a damascus hospital, the search for answers. thousands vanished. these people trace the photographs of the death hoping to recognize a relative. but in the morgue, discovery does not bring relief. this man's son is muhammad. he's 20 years old, and he missed out on the revolution by two months. he was killed two months ago. all this horror while assad lived like a king. the opulence of his palace even looted. >> this was a ballroom, clearly ravaged by fire. you can see where all the chandeliers smashed and burned. >> reporter: at his private home, hints of family life. >> the picture of the dictator that was drawn presumably by his kids. assad and his wife. >> reporter: all these

revelations hopefully providing closure for a people oppressed for so long. for some, returning to the scenes of assad's crimes brings comfort. >> he was held here in 2012. i said, you haven't forgotten? he goes, how am i supposed to forget? i saw people die here. the only place he could come to get a tiny bit of fresh air is when he stood next to this window in the toilet. >> reporter: i can breathe at last, he says. another person freed, american travis timmerman, who had been jailed for months after crossing into syria. now on his way home to missouri. his ordeal over. syria's journey to freedom only just started. events here have redrawn the geopolitical map. turkey and the gulf states are now jockeying for influence. russia, iran, and hezbollah are out. the global implications of what happened here are only just beginning, george. >> george: james longman, thanks.

we're now joined by missouri republican senator schmitt. we saw james longman talking about travis timmerman, a resident of your state. have you had any contact with him or his family? >> i haven't. it's positive news, of course, and we're happy to see that revelation and of course, there's a lot more that's going to unfold there, but i think president trump's been clear as far as us intervening there. i don't think that's a situation that we should do, but i do think diplomacy will be important especially in these critical hours in the aftermath of the -- of assad being overthrown. >> george: the president has said -- president-elect has said we're not going to intervene there. the united states should have nothing to do with it, but we are there right now. there are u.s. troops in syria conducting counterterrorism operations against isis. do you think they should remain? >> i think that's a longer discussion and a discussion that president trump had in his first term. i think we're entering a new phase though of realism in this country. president trump will be less interventionist, and we get back to our core national interests. principally defending the homeland, the indo-pacific, and

china, and so i think that's a longer term conversation. we'll make sure everybody is safe over there. that's the first order of business, but i think again, people have had enough of these forever wars across the world. we can't be everywhere all at once all the time. that's just not our capability, so i think that i'm welcoming president trump coming in with this agenda. >> george: even if that means isis gaining a foothold in syria? >> well, i think, you know, understanding what terrorism means around the world is important, but having these trip wires in other regions that pull us into wars, i think the american people have had enough of that, and i think president trump was pretty clear about it not only in his first term, but when he campaigned, and so again, i think getting back to the sense of, you know, abandoning this failed foreign policy that's cost us trillions of dollars, that sent our men and women across the world, i think we need to revisit that, and again, get back to our core national interests and we have drones flying above new jersey. we don't know what they are. china has a bigger navy than we have. not a better navy, but a bigger navy than we have right now, so getting back to our core national interests is a hallmark of what president trump is ushering in.

>> george: tulsi gabbard as a history with bashar al assad and his regime. she met with him and said supportive things about him and said he wasn't an enemy of the united states, and also questioned whether to use chemical weapons. does that give you any concerns as she faces confirmation for director of national intelligence? >> i know tulsi gabbard. she's a patriot. she served our country honorably. she, i think, fits the reform agenda. president trump ran on disrupting washington and people will view things differently. the intelligence agencies in this country were part of the hunter biden laptop, suppressing that story. there's a lot of reform, george, that needs to happen in those agencies. tulsi gabbard is somebody who i think can execute on that, and she's also somebody that believes in our constitution, individual liberties, and i think this smearing her as some sort of foreign asset is a slur against her, and i look forward to her opportunity to answer these questions in these senate opportunity hearings. >> george: so you do have questions about her relationship with the assad regime or no? >> no, not at all. i don't think so. i don't think it's unusual for

members of the congress to visit foreign countries and talk to foreign leaders. in fact, what joe biden has done is not talk to anybody and not be respected. president trump i think believes in engaging in diplomacy, solving these things. he wants to bring peace to ukraine. i think that's something the american people support. >> george: how about the president's nominee for fbi director, kash patel? he put out a book called "government gangsters" and it included a 60-person enemies list and "the wall street journal" wrote this about it. they said the main concern is mr. patel's stated desire to use power in a second trump term to seek revenge against mr. trump's opponents. voters didn't re-elect mr. trump to practice lawfare the way his opponents have. the country wants a bureau it can trust, not at republican version of the comey fbi. how do you respond to the "wall street journal"? >> the idea he came up with an enemies list is false. there's a footnote related to corrupt actors and i think kash patel is the right man for the job. he served as chief of staff for the department of defense.

he was a prosecutor and public defender and let's review the tape here. the fbi was involved in spying on president trump in 2016. the fbi was involved in the hunter biden laptop coverup. they prebunked that story with big tech. the fbi has investigated catholics because they attend traditional latin mass, and the fbi has investigated parents who show up to school board meetings because under the auspice of the patriot act. i think he'll get the support in the senate. >> george: i want to ask you about president-elect trump's decision to pardon those in the january 6th riots. you spoke out about january 6th and said violence cannot be tolerated. are you confident he will not pardon those who engaged and were convicted of violent acts? >> i think president trump, what he said is he's going to look at these cases on an individual basis, and as a former prosecutor or attorney general, that's the exact right approach. you separate violent acts from nonviolent acts, but i think

he's been clear he's going to view these individually, and i think the media's obsession with january 6th and the democrats' obsession with january 6th is because they've built this foundation on why president trump should never get back in office. it started with this, and then the committee, and then the lawfare that ensued and the american people rejected that. they don't want to be a banana republic. president trump stared all that down, george, and he won, and he won the popular vote and he's coming in on an agenda of reform. >> george: thanks for your time this morning. we're joined by adam schiff. i want you to respond to what you just heard there. >> well, let me just say with respect to some of the nominees like kash patel, this is someone in my view who is not qualified to be fbi director, and someone who claimed for example, that he wanted to shut down fbi headquarters early in his tenure and open a museum to the deep state. so this is a conspiracy theorist.

it's also someone i think who demonstrated sadly a principle of the first trump administration, and that is you rise to the level of your sycophancy, and that's pretty high. >> george: how about the question about the january 6th pardons? >> well, greatly concerned about it. first of all, that he could pardon people that beat police officers, gouged them, bear sprayed them, but also even beyond that, just the general message it would send, george, that his first pardons are going to go to people who sought through the use of violence at the capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power, that played some role in that. really, that's -- that's who he wants to pardon? the american people, i think, voted for him in part because they wanted something done about crime. not because they wanted to see him pardon criminals attacking the government. they want something done about fentanyl. they want something done about -- in california, smash and grab robberies. this is not what they had in

mind, not political revenge, not rewarding people who participated in an insurrection to stop the transfer of power. >> george: the president-elect has also talked about prosecuting members of the january 6th committee like you and you said you don't want a pre-emptive pardon from the biden administration. do you think the trump administration will not prosecute? >> i don't know what the trump administration will do, but it's for a couple of reasons. those of us on the committee are proud of the work we did. we were doing vital, quintessential oversight of a violent attack on the capitol, but so i think it's unnecessary, but second, the precedent of giving blanket pardons on the way out of an administration, i think is a precedent we don't want to set. >> george: and you've communicated that to the president, president biden? >> i communicated it both publicly and privately to the administration. >> george: you also heard senator schmitt, the idea that kash patel had an enemies list is false. there was that list of 60 people in his book.

do those people, former members of the trump administration, and many members of the biden administration, do you think they have anything to worry about? >> well, you know, i think if patel is made director of the fbi, then all bets are off. i mean, this is someone who will do whatever dirty work the president wants him to do. i can understand concerns about him. the remedy there is not to confirm him. that seems to be his only qualification which is blind obedience to the president. the president can find other people who are loyal to him and to his interests, but who are also loyal to the rule of law. patel is not one of them. >> george: you also heard senator schmitt say that tulsi gabbard, that her contacts with bashar al assad and her questioning whether or not he had chemical weapons is not a concern to him. is it a concern to you? >> it is a concern to me. i have a couple of concerns with tulsi gabbard. the first is a complete lack of experience. never worked in an intelligence agency, never even served on the

intelligence committee. there is a steep learning curve in trying to understand what the intelligence systems do, the role, and the interaction between them. not something you want learning on the job, but also, and this gets to the point about her comments about bashar al assad or her echoing of points about the origin of the war in ukraine. you want someone with good judgment in that position because they may very well be whispering in the ear of the president. this is how we should interpret this intelligence, these are the steps that we should take. this is our friend and our enemy. someone showing that poor judgment is not something i want advising this president. >> george: nancy pelosi had that accident in europe this week. do you have any idea how she's doing? >> i communicated with her daughter, christine, and i understand that she's recovering from the surgery well. so our thoughts are going out to her. she's an amazing person, and as strong and as tough as she is, i know she'll be back on her feet

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press," julie pace, and marianna sotomayor. i want to begin with you and pete hegseth. has he turned the tide? >> i think he has. i think he's turned the tide. you're seeing trump double down. i think the members are looking at this as a rallying cry. they're pointing to the bronze stars, the tours of duty, potentially deputy secretary a guy like feinberg plays a place. detailed guy, and i think so. i think you're seeing corporate support coming out of the woodwork, and i think that is in the inauguration, and i think the two things happening, we're seeing these leaks every day, you know, facebook's coming on board, and other companies are coming on board. plus, the rallying cry around pete. i think trump is as tough as ever right now. i mean, he's on the world stage. people are coming to him. i think this is on a big-time cruise control, you know, 85 miles an hour down the middle of the interstate. >> george: you cover congress. do you agree with his chances right now? >> we have to wait for his hearing early on next year, but there has been a significant shift, and i think the reason

why is because the moment that trump came out and said that he is behind his pick, we did see a number of trump allies kind of green lighting to the maga base, all right. start calling senators who are a little bit worried on hegseth. start -- start to threaten actually, a number of senators including senator joni ernst, that she could get primaried. this is something elon musk has said publicly he will use his superpacs to not just find candidates, to go against any senator who may vote against a nominee, but also fund those campaigns. >> george: it was quite a saga inside the trump transition, julie pace. there was concern -- some concern it appeared, he not been straight an his past with him. they floated the idea of ran desantis. it's all over now. >> i think marianna has it right. this is a pivot point when that point against ernst started to mount. i think that took over and became the dominant focus to

some of these senators as opposed to the allegations and questions. he has the confirmation hearings and you can never fully predict how a candidate is going to appear in those confirmation hearings, but he appears to be in better standing, and questions about tulsi gabbard based on the magnitude of that job and the importance of intelligence agencies and her own lack of experience in that space. >> george: what's the democrats' strategy on handling these various confirmations? >> well, the first thing is to vet all of these candidates. the second thing is to make sure they get a proper hearing so that we know exactly who these individuals are. look. it's clear to me that, you know, the chairman says that they are running down the road 85 miles per hour. i don't know if that's speed limit or if they're trying to break the rules. >> in nebraska. >> i need to get there soon. there's a blue dot and i love it, but it's clear to me that they've unleashed maga on the senators who were waffling or senators who raised objections

or raised concern, and when i say they've unleashed maga, they've unleashed the full -- the steve bannons of the world. they go after these senators. they're threatening these senators using all the dark money. so i think right now everybody's on pause until the actual hearings start. >> they didn't unleash maga. america unleashed maga. i mean, the whole point of trump's victory is how did the traditional picks that we used to always put in place -- how did that work for us? the american people rejected it and they accepted what donald trump's been selling in this country for the last couple of years. so i mean, he won with muslim voters in dearborn. he won with puerto ricans in florida. he won majority of male hispanic voters. he won in every state across the country better except for i think, like, washington and oregon or something like that. so maga is here because maga's been accepted by the american people. so that's why we're here. we got to be reminded of this all the time. >> but there are also americans

who while i understand maga, but there are 74 million, 75 million americans who are not maga, who still believe that individuals should be vetted, that the senate has a constitutional responsibility. >> and they will. >> to advise and consent. >> they will. >> but they are, you know, smearing people. they're threatening, you know, members of the united states senate. that's fine -- you do it. >> george: i guess one of the questions for some of the other nominees like tulsi gabbard and rfk jr., is do they reflect the promises that president trump is making during the campaign? >> i think in some ways, yes. there is that maga base who wanted the shakeup of washington. however, it does come down to loyalty with trump. it was interesting that "time" interview he did. he kept saying, oh, yes. rfk, he's going to be making suggestions on vaccines or this issue, but at the end of the day, it's my decision. same thing with gabbard. he was pretty surprised to hear that the intelligence community was pretty concerned with her nomination.

for him, it's -- it is loyalty. he wants people to be there, but he ultimately sees his role as, i make the decision. >> george: it'll be interesting to see whether republican senators have the same kind of support for former democrats like tulsi gabbard and rfk jr. as they do for someone like a pete hegseth. >> this is what's so fascinating. if you take the trump nominees in aggregate, there is no ideological consistency there, and there's no consistency in terms of even the political parties they have supported before, and so i think you're right, marianna, it doesn't matter. this is about personal loyalty more than anything else, and as by turn the corner and we get into the actual administration, we all know two things. one, donald trump as president, will be held responsible by the american people for outcomes over the next four years, and two, loyalty is fleeting sometimes with president trump. if he doesn't feel like somebody is living up to either what they have promised or he has promised the public or their own loyalty to him, they'll most likely be cast aside pretty quickly. >> george: do you have a sense which of these the democrats are most concerned about? >> the fbi director, the way in

which chris wray basically was told, there's the door. head toward it. the democrats have a large role the play. while we might like the votes, i still believe that the democrats are going to ensure some checks and balances are there, and raise as many questions as possible. >> george: let's talk a little bit more about that "time" magazine interview. you see the cover there. he was elected the man of the year. one of the interesting things you saw, reince priebus, is the president resetting expectations on inflation, and during the campaign, he was talking about it coming down like this, and now he's saying, it might be harder than you think. >> yeah. well, i think he's also being pretty practical. i think if you looked at the interview he did last week on an nbc -- i saw a president that was pretty disciplined, somebody who wanted to appeal to a lot of people, a people that's speaking to the interstate that's right now driving down the center lane of the interstate. i thought it was a remarkable interview.

certainly deserved. he's been someone who's not just been person of the year. he's been person of the century, and it's been a remarkable comeback from assassinations, court hearings, left for dead, biden resigning, new person comes in, and there's been -- there's nothing more trumpy in the last chapter than to lose and then to come back and win. you couldn't write it, and it was a remarkable interview. >> but this point about grocery prices for example, i mean, i do think this is really notable because so much of the -- so much of the public anger over the last couple of years has been with the biden administration and their inability to bring down inflation, cost of living, and some of that is because of policy decisions and some of it is because presidents don't fully have control over things like that, and the notion of president trump making that clear, hey. this actually might be hard, that's one of those reference points we'll be going back to quite a bit over the next year or so. >> oil was down to $40 a barrel. that's how you get inflation. >> but also, all production in the united states is up, up, up.

>> it's going to go up, up, up. >> it's 13,000 barrels now. under when donald trump was president, it was 11,000. democrats got no credit for what we did in bringing the inflation down and trying to lower prices. the post-covid surge was real, and donald trump hammered the president and then later the vice president, and for him to retract and basically say, i can't fix this, maybe -- no. it's not going to fly with the american people. >> george: we know we're going to be seeing a lot of executive action on the first day as the new trump administration. what is congress braced for? what are they expecting out of the first hundred days and can they achieve it with such a narrow majority in the house? >> now they are expecting a lot of executive orders. it was interesting that in that interview, you know, trump said, congress has a role, but the moment he gets the sense that republicans cannot get on board for a number of issues that they want to address, border security, energy reforms, taxes,

it's obviously very narrow majorities in the house and the senate. trump says, well, i can just do whatever i want and be executive order. we have seen republican leadership start to position, and be able to push back against trump and say, okay. well, if you want to do border security, oil, all of those reforms, we will tackle that first. that's going against their plan of just one big policy bill that they were planning into the new year. it's just going to be really tough with the very narrow three-seat margin. >> george: what's the most important thing to get done? >> if he can get tax reform done in six, seven, eight months, i think that's number one. executive orders, i think they're going to be about 50 executive orders on day one, immigration, regulation, energy, and they're going to hit that fast and furious. they're already working on it right now. >> george: it might seem different than the first trump administration? >> i was there in the white house. >> so was i. >> the first couple of days, and there was a lot of action. i think the difference in those

first couple of days the first term was it was action without often a lot of detail or substance behind it. it was action for the sake of action. this time there's been a lot of more preparation that has gone into this, and i would expect that the executive actions that will come forward will have more of a path to implementation than some of what we saw in those early first days. >> expect the unexpected. >> george: we'll end on that. thank you all very much. coming up, how artificial intelligence reshaped our world. eric schmidt discusses his new book on a.i. when we come back. . eric schmidt discusses his new book on a.i. when we come back. a lot of code. if an application needs to be modernized, then you'll need time, resources... and caffeine. if this sounds daunting, then use watsonx code assistant. built with ibm's granite code model, it's ai designed to multiply developer productivity, so you can generate code quickly. ibm. let's create.

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it brings with it difficulty, but we have to be at the fore -- it's going to happen, and if it's going to happen, we have to take the lead over china. china's the primary threat in terms of that. you know, there are those people that say it takes over the human race. it's really powerful stuff, a.i. so let's see how it all works out. >> george: president-elect trump talking about artificial intelligence there. i'm joined now by the former chairman and ceo of google, eric schmidt. he's the author of a new book called "genesis." thank you for coming in. >> thank you. >> george: you lay out the stakes of a.i. in pretty stark terms. i want to read it right here. advent of artificial intelligence is a question of human survival. explain. >> we need to take advantage, and this is what the book is about.

the incredible power of the arrival of a.i. and a new kind of intelligence while preserving human dignity and values. it's going to be hugely hard. it's so going to be very, very difficult to maintain that balance. >> george: why is it so difficult? >> because the systems move so quickly. look at what social media has done in terms of overall zeitgeist in our country and around the world, and now imagine a much more intelligent, much more -- much stronger way of sending messages and inventing things, the way of innovation, drug discovery, and all of that, plus all sorts of bad things like weapons and cyberattacks and things like that. it's happening very, very fast. >> george: you have a sentence that sounds innocuous, but it isn't. machines with the ability to find their own objectives are not far away. >> we're soon going to be able to have computers running on their own deciding what they want to do, and the way that happens is it's a series of decisions. we go from agents to then sort of more powerful goals and then eventually you say to the computer, learn everything and do everything, and that's a dangerous point. when the system can self-improve, we need to seriously think about unplugging it. >> george: wouldn't that kind of

system have the ability to counter or efforts to unplug it? >> in theory, we better have somebody with the hand on the plug metaphorically, but the important thing is the power of this intelligence, the ability for this kind of new intelligence means that each and every person is going to have the equivalent of a polymath in your pocket. in addition to your show and writers, you're going to have an einstein and leonardo da vinci on your show. that will be true for everyone on the planet. we don't know what that means to give that power to every individual. >> george: is that just happening? is there any way to control it with all these different companies moving at different speeds? >> well, there's a problem which we call the eye of the needle in the industry, where all of the current companies are spending an awful lot of time testing and making sure that their models don't for example, encourage you to kill yourself or show you how to build a nuclear weapon, all these obviously horrific things.

what happens is the competition is so fierce, there's a concern that one of the companies will decide to omit the steps and then somehow release something that really does some harm. >> george: is there any way for us to know if that's happening? >> well, we'll discover it after it occurs. today, the general agreement is that the -- the companies are reporting to the government and each other the steps and the tests that they're doing, which is a good thing. >> george: what about the question that president trump -- president-elect trump raised in that interview we saw right there, the competition with china? where are we? where is china? >> i used to think we were a couple of years ahead of china, but china has caught up in the last six months in a way that is remarkable. the fact of the matter is a couple of the chinese programs, for one, it's called deep seek looks like they've caught up, and this is even after these extraordinary efforts by the trump and biden administration to withhold high-powered chips. the chinese are clever, and they understand the power of a new

kind of intelligence for their industrial might, their military might, and their surveillance system. >> george: i want to read you something that sam altman, one of the pioneers of a.i. said last week. he said true superintelligence, the system that is not just smarter than you, and smarter than me, but smarter than all of us put together, just unbelievable capability, even if we can make that technically safe, we're going to have to have some faith in our governments. are governments doing what they need to do to regulate this? >> not yet, but they will because they'll have to. the way this will work is that the -- i've done this for 50 years and never seen innovation at this scale, this literally remarkable human achievement of the intelligence and things we can do, and the advances in science and on and on. there's a point at which maybe in the next year or two, where the systems can begin to do their own research. they're called a.i. scientists as opposed to human scientists. you go from having a thousand human scientists to a million a.i. scientists. that increases the slope. when you're moving at this space, it's very hard for your competitors to catch up. that's the race. it is crucial that america wins this race globally and in

particular ahead of china. >> george: but those are two different races, aren't they? you're talking about the technological race, but it doesn't appear in my experience, that government can keep up with what the corporations are doing. >> they're going to -- one of the things the book talks about, is the government has a role. dr. kissinger felt very strongly, that the future of intelligence what i'm talking about, should not be left to people like me. the technologists should not be the only ones making these decisions. we need a consensus about how to put the right guardrails on these things to preserve human dignity. it's very important. >> george: so how do we develop that? >> well, it will come over time. now with the trump administration, we have a new set of people who will examine this. in my view in the trump administration, it will be largely focused on china versus the u.s. which is a good thing to focus on, and the u.s., as

long as human values and by that, i mean, democratic liberal values in the classic sense of individual freedom and respect for an individual, are preserved, we should be okay. >> george: so if you were emperor of the world for one hour, what are the three things you would order to get done to control this? >> the most important thing i would do is make sure the west wins, which means more money, more hardware, more people, that kind of stuff. the second thing i would do is identify the worst possible cases and build a second system that watches the first. humans will not be able to police a.i., but a.i. systems should be able to police a.i. >> george: eric schmidt, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> george: we'll be right back. you very much. >> thank you. >> george: we'll be right back.

your next favorite thing about this place is waiting to be discovered. did you know you can do this? ... pretty cool, right? ... and you don't want to miss that. you can also ride this ... and then race on over to do this... and before you leave? you definitely wanna see that. >> george: that is all for us today. thanks for sharing part of your sunday with us. check out "world news tonight," and i'll see tomorrow on "gma." "

a devastating tornado hit santa cruz county, flipping over cars and downing trees. the fallout from this surprising storm just ahead. >> it's a dry day today, but we

certainly have foggy conditions in the north bay and chilly conditions all around the bay. so the golden gate bridge there socked in with some clouds. we'll talk about some sunshine today in a return to rain for monday morning's commute. that's all. next on abc. seven mornings at nine. and when you have available ford bluecruise enabled, you can take your hands off the wheel when you're on a highway and just cruise. >> and the hats are. >>