vets and he calls an indefensible allegations against the v.a. and outlined what he is going to do about it. >> i was too trusting of some and accepted as accurate reports that i now know as mislead iing with that regard. to patient wait times. kan i can't explain the lack of s g integrity of some of the leaders of our health care facilities. this is something i rarely encountered during 38 years in uniform. and so, i will not defend it, because it is indefensible. but i can take responsibility for it. and i do. so given the facts that i now know, i apologize as the senior leader of the department of veteran affairs, and i extend an

apology to the people i most care about, and that is the veterans of this great country. >> this morning president obama's says this morning's conversation with general shinseki would be a tough one. >> i'll have a serious conversation with him about whether he thinks that, you know, he is prepared and has the capacity to take on the job of fixing it, because i don't want any veteran to not be getting the kind of services they deserve. >> is joining me now is peter alexander, and now congresswoman tammy duckworth, disabled iraq vet and former v.a. department official has joined the chorus saying that general shinseki should step the down. >> yes, tamron. that is right. this chorus is a lot louder over the course of the last 24 hours or so and more than 110 members of congress and notably a lot of them are senate democrats included and at least 11 senate democrats are on board as well saying that eric shinseki needs

to go. a lot of the democrats are facing re-election, and so it is a significant political issue for the white house as well. we are waiting to see when this meeting with shinseki wraps up whether president obama will walk out to the briefing room, and make any remarks about this. timing is significant here, tamron, because the president heads out of town next week, and of course, there is a d-day remembrance overseas, and we will be traveling with him when he makes the remarks on the 70th anniversary of d-day at norma y normandy, and the white house does not want this issue looming over their heads as they try to focus on another historic anniversary and celebration of the commemoration of the lives of the v.a. veterans. but beyond that eric shinseki said he is taking action and this is what he said a short time ago. >> i have initiated the process of the removal of the senior leaders of the phoenix v.a. medical center, and wait times be removed from the evaluation reports as a measure of their success, and now i ask congress

to support congressman's bernie sanders' bill to give the v.a. director more authority to remove senior leaders. >> eric shinseki has vowed to stay on as v.a. secretary as long as he has the confidence of the president, but the white house press secretary jay carney didn't really answers the question when said to say yes or no, he would not in fact say whether the president still retains that confidence in this v.a. secretary. i spoke privately with some folks in the white house, and they acknowledge if a decision is made to look for a new v.a. secretary, that is a tough job to fill tamron, and they recognize that there would be someone with a strong leader and also someone who has credibility within the military community, and even as there are considerations to be made with the problems of eric shinseki, it is in the back of the minds of the consideration of who might be next. >> all right. peter alexander is live at the

white house where the president is meeting with general shinseki right now, and thank you. i want to bring in democratic senator blumenthal, executive of the veteran affairs committee, and senator, thank you for the time. >> thank you. great to be with you. >> and general shinseki announced the changes that he would like to implement or he has already put in place, removing the senior leaders at the phoenix center, and employees' success based on the wait times and other key things that he believes will improve the system, itself. with that said, do you believe it is time for general shinseki to pass the job on to someone else? >> the challenge right now, and it is really the primary challenge for the v.a. health care administration is not about firing one person, but it is about fixing what is wrong. a bureaucratic system that is overly rigid and giving the veterans the run-around and the

rigmarole and denying access to the system. the weaknesses in the system need to be addressed immediately. and general shinseki if he is going to stay, and i have not reached a conclusion, is going to have to show the american people a greater sense of urgency and passion and specific decisive action, and he is beginning by some of the measures announced today, but much more has to be done. >> and senator blumenthal, i have confirmed that the president will be at the briefing room today, and at the briefing room today at 11:15 to discuss his meeting with general shinseki, and they have been meeting all morning long and we just gotten word that we will hear from the president, and to your point though about the urgency, and shinseki has been in the position for six years and the problems with the v.a. system were noted well before that, and in part of the job was to improve the system. now, we see that it was not the case, and his new comments today, he said that perhaps he put trust and competence in the

wrong people, and some would say, well, that is the sign of the bad leader and the job is to put the right people in place to fix the problem. granted, he has laid out a few ideas today, but the key word that i am picking up on is urgency, and a lot of the vets and the families are disturbed by the lack of urgency across the board in remedying these problems and not just with general shinseki. >> the bureaucratic rigidity and the failure is the product of the people who shouldn't be there, and the people who should be shown the door and people who urgently and immediately ought to be fired. if he has failed to do it at a the mid level and needs expanded authority, i strongly support the increased authority of the accountability act passed by the house about ten days ago and the disciplinary measures that need to be imposed that perhaps he

could not take it, because he needs the authority to do it as a commander in the military would. i do a lot of let listening to the veteran, and they are sympathetic to general shinseki and not because he is a decorated combat wounded leader of proven value and courage, but also because he has been perhaps hand strung by some of the bureaucratic rules that he has confining him. he needs out of that, and needs authority to ensure that the veterans get the health care they need by paying for the expenses of private clinics and doctors and hospitals. >> to your point, one of the actions is that he has asked for greater authority to remove the senior leaders, but something that our own colonel jack jacobs, a honorary medal of h honor recipient, and a man who is has served this country admirably believes that the

reviews coming back from the vets say that once they get in, the service is great, despite that, but that this system needs to be overhauled completely. >> key to the overhaul is accountability. and it begins by holding accountable through criminal prosecution people who falsified documents, doctored records, and obstru obstructed justice in violation of the criminal law. >> say you clear out all of those people, and prosecute if a that is the line to be followed here. how do you reform the system? what do you believe is the first major step that can be taken to e reform the v.a. health system? >> first of all, cleaning house in terms of the people who are not doing their job, and that is number one. number two, bringing into the picture, a commission that can look at health care delivery reform. you know, the v.a. has led the nation in certain aspects of health care, electronic records, caring for the amputees and the victims of post tr-traumatic sts

and other kinds of combat related wounds and certain geriatric care for the older patients, and they have not led the nation recently in the primary care physician care, and the numbers of doctors has to be increased, more hiring of the doctors and there are 400 position vacant right now, and the caseloads are vastly larger than they should be for some physicians, so there the needs to be more resources, and this is a multifaceted effort, and no single solution, and no panacea, and the health care delivery is the key to reforming this system. >> the politics of it all, and you know, i get a lot of people who write into us, and say that s suddenly, you have lawmakers who are on television and in radio and print being quoted and many of them perhaps have been never inside of a v.a. hospital, and do you believe that there is bipartisanship available, and it is even possible within washington to the provide the funds that would be needed and

some of the other significant changes that are needed that you and others have proposed? >> i think that there is bipartisan supper port for fundamental reform and most importantly, improved patient care for our veterans. there is no excuse, none, for anything but the best state-of-the-art world class d medicine for men and women who have put their lives on the line. they have put their lives at risk in combat, and they should not be put at risk by anything less than the best possible medical care, and i think that there is strong bipartisan support for that proposal. on the subject, just to give you one example of an investigation by the department of justice, both senator kcornyn and i have wr written to the department of justice and although in separate letters calling for a criminal investigation involving the fbi and the department of justice and taking the lead, because only those department of justice

attorneys can convene a grand jury and only they have the resources and the expertise and the authority to do it right. there is the fundamental opportunity here, and a great opportunity, and historic for bipartisan effort to reform the system. >> senator, thank you so much for your time, and i refer to colonel jack jacobs who is on the phone with us, and i have christine o'donnell, and kristen welk ear at the white house standing by. and now, let's start with you, because you heard the speaker boehner and nancy pelosi both on the same page in their idea of the you remove general shinseki from his position, does it address the systemic problems that exist within the v.a.? what are you believing will happen today, colonel? >> it is difficult to save whether or not general shinseki is going to be ousted today, but i have known it for a long, long time, and he is going to stay in the post until he is removed.

so if he comes out to say he has resigned, or if the president or somebody else in the white house comes out to say he has resigned, it is because he was told. i don't see him resigning because there is a lot of heat and pressure on him. and that is the first thing. the second thing is they don't think that he is going to be leaving until they will have found somebody to have taken the job. there is a recurring rumor that the person who is being considered for the job who is at the top of the list is general odierno who is current chief of staff of the army. >> who was also with the president at the white house for youth, safety and sports, and he was at that event yesterday. >> well, he is a completely different personality than rick shinse shinseki. rick shinseki is quiet, gentlemanly, and stays out of the spotlight, and i'm not saying, general dodierno like s

the spotlight, but he is a big football player, and rough and tough shouold eier, and he can intimidate you just by the mere presence. he is a man amongst men. >> and this a general to your point with great leadership and a great history behind him, but is this, do you believe an issue of the management style that we are seeing the problems at the v.a.? >> no, not at all. as you mentioned earlier, i'm certainly in favor of eliminating the entire system for a wide variety of very, very good reasons to deliver much, much, better care and much quicker to the veterans, but it is not ultimately a question of management style, but what may happen is that general shinseki may leave, and somebody else will replace him, and just to keep the heat off of the white house in the meantime, so it looks like it is doing something. that is not ultimately going to fix the system.

it needs a complete and total overhaul, and that includes providing medical care through the public/private partnerships that we have in existence. there is no reason why a veteran can't go to the doctor of his choice and get treated for e free and the government pays the doctor. indeed, i have seen studies which indicate that if you do that instead of having a parallel bizarre row world of the veterans administration, the department of veterans affairs medical system, you would provide met better medical care, and quicker medical care and do it as an enormous saving. i have seen some who say it is in the neighborhood of $30 billion. >> we have discussed that report, colonel, a rnld ynd you this the better than anyone, but it shows that when vets have gone in the care, they have ultimately given the v.a. a great ve view, and there is a sensitivity when you bring up the privatization of anything, it is turned into a political

back and forth abdepending on someone's point of view, and what do you say to that, when people are pointing to the reviews from the vets who say that all in all, they are happy with the v.a. system. >> well, if you ask most people what they think of the doctors and medical facilities most of them will give you the same larks, and it is not done overnight, but it is something to segue, and a long overlap, and so on. may take five or ten years to get it done, but the, at least the problem is getting the medical care in the first place and it does not matter how good the medical care is, and if the organization providing it can't get you in front of the doctor and if you have to get the appointment and all of the rest of that stuff, and i don't think that the huge bureaucracy like the department of veterans affairs medical establishment is capable of being reformed, sufficiently, to provide quick and proper medical care to our veteran

veterans which is what they deserve. >> colonel, i hope you can stay here with us, and i we hope that the president is a minute or so away. and quickly, we want to go to kristen welker, and jay carnal carney stumbled through the answer when asked if he had confidence in general shinseki, and what are you hearing here? >> well, that is of course, the big question, and does president obama continue to have confidence in president obagene and that is true, i have been told that by an official that going into the meeting general shinseki was on thin ice and probation, and one official telling me that one of the big problems with this report from the perspective of the president is that it highlighted the fact that there is systemic widespread misconduct throughout the v.a. and you will recall that secretary shinseki had initially said that these issues of the misconduct were isolated, that they were weren't widespread and secretary shinseki earlier himself today said that he now admits that he was mistake n

about that. that is one of the issues that -- here is the president. >> okay. i ha i have to interrupt you. >> and general shinseki and rob nabors who i have temporarily assigned to work the v.a. have presented me with the department's initial review of the v.a. facilities nationwide, and what they have found is that the misconduct has not been limited to a few of the v.a. facilities, but to many across the country. it is totally unacceptable, and our veterans deserve the best, and they have earned it. last week, i said that if we found misconduct, it would be puni punished, and i meant it. secretary shinseki has now begun the process of firing many of the people responsible, including the senior leader s a the phoenix v.a. he has can e selled any possible performance bonuses for any executives and ordered the v.a.'s to contact every single

veteran in phoenix to schedule op points for the care they need and deserve. this morning i think that some of you also heard rick take a truly remarkable action. in public remarks he took respon responsible for the conduct of those facilities and apologized to the fellow veterans and the american people. in a few moments ago he offered me his letter of resignation and with considerable regret, i accepted. he has served the country with honor for 50 years. he did two tours of combat in vietnam, and he is a veteran who left a part of himself on the battlefield. he rose to command the first cavalry division and served as army chief of staff and has never been afraid to speak truth to power. as secretary of the v.a. he presided over record investments

in the system, and delivering more care and disability pay to those veterans exposed to agent orange and making it easier for those with post-traumatic stress and brain injuries and post-traumatic stress to get treatment and improved care for the women veterans and at the same time he helped to reduce veteran homeless neness and hel more than 1 million veterans and their families pursue education under the post 9/11 g. g.i. bill. his service is unquestioned. his service to the country is exemplary, and i am grateful to the service, and as are many veterans across the country. he has worked hard to investigate and identify the problems with access to care, but as he told me this morning, the v.a. needs new leadership to address them. he does not want to be a

distraction, because his priority is to fix the problem and make sure our vets are getting the care they need. that was rick's judgment on behalf of his fellow veterans. i agree. we don't have time for distractions, we need to fix the probl problem. for now, the leader that will help move us forward is sloan gibson who is going to take on the reins as acting secretary. sloan became deputy secretary at the v.a. three months ago, but he, too, has devoted his life to serving the country and veterans. his grandfather fought on the front lines of world war war one and his father was a tail gunner in world war ii, and he graduated from the naval academy and ceo of the uso who does a remarkable job to support the men and women at war and the families and the wounded warriors and families of the

fallen. so, all totaled, he has 20 years of private sector and nonprivate sector work to build a 21st century v.a. i am grateful that he is willing to take on this task. i met with sloan after i met with rick this morning and made it clear that reforms should not wait. they need to proceed immediate ly. i have asked rob nay bors to stay at the v.a. temporarily to help sloan and the department through this transition, and to complete his own review of the vha. in the meantime, we are going to be looking diligently for a new permanent v.a. secretary and we hope to confirm that successor and fill that post as soon as possible. we are going do right by the veterans across the board as long as it takes. we are not going to stop working to make sure that they get the care, the benefit and the opportunities that they have earned and they deserve. i said that we wouldn't tolerate misconduct, and we will not. i said that we have to do better, and we will. there are too many veterans

receiving care right now who deserve all of the best efforts, and an honest assessment if something is not working. this week, i visited some of the men and the women in uniform at different stages of their service. our newest army officers who graduated from west point, and the troops who graduated from afghanistan and the military families at arlington, and what i saw is what i have seen in every single service member military member and spouse i have said which is a clear eyed commitment to the service to the country and the best they know how, and they are the best that the kun tcountry offers and the their duty. they expect us to do ours. so today, i want every man and woman who has served under the flag to know that whether your tour has been over for decades or is just about to end, we will never stop working to do right by you and your families.

let me take a couple of questions. right here. leo. >> and the white house had confidence in him up to today, and what made your difference? >> which judgment? >> i think that his belief that he would be a distraction from the task at hand which is to make sure that what is broken gets fixed so that his fellow veterans are getting the services they need. i want to reiterate, he is a very good man. i don't just mean he is an accomplished man, and that he has been an outstanding soldier, he is a good person. who has done exemplary work on our behalf. and under his leadership, we have seen more progress on more fronts at the v.a. and a bigger

inves investment in the v.a. than just about any other v.a. secretary. cut veteran homelessness by 24%. brought in folks who had been exposed to agent orange who had been waiting for decades to get the services and benefits that they deserved and needed. and dealing with facilities for women vets who all too often were not receiving the kind of specialized services that they needed. so he has been a champion of our veterans, and where there's problems has been willing and ready to get in there and fix it. so with the disability backlog that had shot up as a consequence of the admission of

the agent orange veterans as with well adds making it easier to apply for post-traumatic stress disorder disability claims, and when it spiked, he went at it in a systemic way, and now we have cut it by 50% over the course of the last year or so. he's not adverse to admitting where there is a problem and going after it. but we occupy not just a environment that calls for management fixes, we have also got to deal with congress and you guys and i think that rick's judgment that he could not carry out the next stages of reform without being a distraction, himself. so my assessment was unfo unfortunately was he was right. i regret that he has to resign

under these circumstances, but i also have confidence in sloan, and i share rick shinseki's assessment that the number one priority is making sure that the problems get fixed so that if there is a veteran out there who needs helped, they are getting a schedule, and they are able to come in to get a see a doctor, and if there is the a facility without enough doctors or nurses or spaces, that information is immediate immediately getting in the hands of the decisionmakers all of the way up to me and congress so that we can get more resources in there to the help folks. and that is going to seem to be the biggest problem, that i think that is the thing that offended secretary shinseki the most in the course of the process. you know, he described to me the fact that when he was in theatre he might have had to order an attack just based on a phone call from some 20-something-year-old corporate

and he has to trust that he is getting good information, and it is life or death. and now i think thae he is deeply disappointed in the fact that bad news did not get to him. the structures weren't in place for him to identify this problem quickly and fix it. his priority now is to make sure that happens, and he felt like new leadership would be, would serve the veterans best, and i agree with him. phil mattingly. >> mr. president, based on the audit that was presented to you by the secretary, is there a sense that there was criminal wrongdoing, and i guess more broadly, how much responsibility do you personally bear as being an issue that you care about deeply and campaigned on while we are at this point? >> well, i will leave it to the justice department in terms of whether or not there has been criminal wrongdoing. in terms of the responsibility,

as i said before, this is my administration and i will take responsibility for whatever happens, and this is an area of which i have a particular concern with. this predates my presidency when i was on the senate, and i was on the veterans affairs committee, and i heard firsthand veterans not getting the kinds of services and benefits that they earned. and i pledged that if i had the privilege of serving as commander in chief and president, we would fix it. the v.a. is a big organization that has had problems for a very long time, and in some cases management problems and in some cases funding problems, and so what we have tried to do is to systematically go after the problems that we were aware of, and fix them. and where we have seen the veterans not being properly served whether it was too many homeless veterans or a disability claims process that is taking too long, we would go at it and chip away at it and

fix it. when it came to funding, we have increased funding for v.a. services in unprecedented fashion, because we understood that it is not enough to give lip service to our veterans, but not be willing to put our money where our mouth is. and so, what i can say confidently, and that there has been a priority and a priority reflected in the budget, and that in terms of the managing the v.a. where we have seen a problem, and where we have been aware of a problem, we have gone after it and fixed it and been able to make significant progress. but what is absolutely clear is this one, this issue of scheduling is one that the reporting systems inside of the vha did not surface to the level

where rick was aware of it or where we were able to see it. this is not something that we were hearing when i was traveling around the country, and the particular issue of scheduli scheduling. and what we are going to have to do as part of the review is to how to make sure that we get information about the systems that are not working. i just was talking to rob nabors and he described to me for example in just very specific detail, how in some of the facilities, you have got computer systems for scheduling that date back to the '90s. the situations in which one scheduler might have to look at four or five different screens to figure out where there is a slot, and where there might be a doctor available. situations in which they are manually passing requests for an appointment over to somebody else who is then inputting it.

so then you have in many cases old systems, broken down systems, and this is stuff that is immanently fixable, but we have to know about it. you know, the big concern that i have got and what i am going to be interested in finding out is how is it that in a number of these facilities, if in fact, you have veterans waiting too long for an appointment, that, that information did not surface sooner so that we could go ahead and fix it. one last point that i want to make on this. when veterans have gotten the access to the system, the health care, itself, that they are receiving has gotten high marks from our veteran service organizations and the veterans, themselves. so it is important to keep in mind that what the review indicates so far at least is that there have been great strides seen in the actual care

provided to veterans that challenges getting veterans into the door particularly for the first appointment in some cases. and where they don't have an established relationship with a doctor and they are not in the system. part of that is going to be technology, and part of that is management, but as rick shinseki, himself, indicated, there is a need for a change in culture within the vh, and perhaps the va as a whole that makes sure that bad news gets surfaced quickly so that things can be fixed. i know that was the attitude of secretary shinseki, and that what he communicated to folks under him, but they didn't execute, and that is a problem. christy par sons, last question. >> thank you, mr. president. you said that it was the general's own judgment that made the decision for you here, and if i remember correctly, secretary sebelius offered you

her resignation after health care.gov failed, and you would not take it, and i wonder if there is any scapegoating going on here. >> meaning? >> meaning that the dysfunction of the department is very deep and very widespread, so it is, you know, lopping off the head of it really the best step to take going forward here is and what i am asking is there is a political reason for removing him other than going straight to the problem in the bureaucracy? >> well, the distractions that rick refers to in part are political. he needs to be -- at this stage what i want is somebody at the v.a. who is not spending time outside of solving problems for the veterans. i want somebody who is spending every minute of every day figuring out how have we called every veteran who is waiting.

have they gotten a schedule? are we fixing the system? what kind of new technology do we need? have we made a realistic assessment of how long the wait time times are right now, and how do we bring those wait times down in certain facilities where the wait times are too long? if we need more money, how much more money do we need to ask from congress? and how am i go g ing to make s that congress delivers on that additional funding? that is what i want somebody at the v.a. focused on, and not how are they getting second-guessed and, you know, speculation about their futures and so on and so forth, and that is what rick agreed to as well. with respect to secretary sebelius at the time, i thought it would be a distraction to replace somebody at hhs at a time when we were trying to the

fix that system. i wanted to stay focused, because i knew that if we beared down on it and got the folks enrolled in it, it would work, so in each instance, my primary decision is based on how can i deliver service to the american people, and in this case, how can i deliver for the veterans. and because they are people of integrity, i think that in both of the cases of secretary sebelius, but certainly in the case here of rick shinseki, they have the same priority. their view is what is it that is going to best deliver on e behalf of the folks who as rick said this morning have been let down. >> and i remember at the time you felt that she had so much knowledge about what had gone wrong and that you could not afford the lose it, but does somebody with three months in leadership in the department have the capacity to attack the problem quickly now? >> well, we need a v.a. secretary, so sloan is acting. sloan i think would be the first

to ak nong that he is going to have -- to acknowledge that he has a learning curve to deal with, but the reason of the surface of this attention is one that we can start to tackling right away, and without completely transforming the system, with we can immediately make some progress. we are going to have longer term issues that we have to take care of, so, my first step is everybody who is out there waiting, get them an appointment, and if we need more doctors, let's figure out how to surge some doctors in there so that they are getting the help that they need. what i want to the make sure of then is that even if it is still patchwork, how do we make sure that there is no slippage between somebody making a phone call and them getting an

appointment schedule and have a realistic time for how soon they are going to get an appointment, and those are the things that don't require rocket science, and it requires execution, and discipline and requires focus and those are the things that sloan has. then there are going to be some broader issues that we have to tackle. the information systems inside of the vha, and those are probably going to have to be changed and that is going to cost some money and take some time, and be implemented. there are going to have to be some changes in the culture within the vha because as i said, they are providing very good service, medical treatment to our veterans when they get into the system. but, they don't have apparently the state of the art operations that you would want to see for xexam ple in the major medical center or hospital. now, keep in mind that those of us who are outside of the v.a. system and trying to get an appointment with the doctor in the private sector and try to

get an appointment with, you know, a schedule for the hospital visit, and there are probably some weight times as well, and figure out what are the realistic benchmarks for the system, and my suspicion is that with not only all of the veteran veterans from iraq and afghanistan coming back, but also the aging of our vietnam vets who may have more chronic illnesses, and may need more z visits and we may need more doctors and nurses ashs and that going to cost some money. which means that is going to have to be reflected in the veteran affairs budget which i have consistently increased even during fiscally tight times, there is no area that i have put more priority than making sure that we are delivering the kind of budget that is necessary to make sure that our veterans are being served, but it may still

not be enough, but before we start to spending more mo e neeshgs our first job is to take care of some basic management issues that can be fixed, all right? thank you. >> there you have it the breaking news of the morning and president obama accepting the resignation of v.a. secretary shinseki. i have got with me chris matthews and colonel jack jacobs is standing by and chris, i want to start with you, and the president said citric's judgment that he is going to be a distraction at the task at hand and dealing with the long wait s a and what do you think? >> i think that the way they scheduled it, the president was intending to accept the resignation, because people expect our top level executive s to be on alert, and this is not honorary positions, but you are a like a soldier who should know what is going on, like on a post, and it is for people who believe in the affordable health care act and believe in this role, and this is a political

situation, if the democrats don't show the crackle in the way they run the government, the people will have a problem with it. >> and the president noted that couple of times his budget has included money for the v.a. system, and we know it was back in february that the senate republicans blocked $24 billion to go to the v.a. services and programs and we know that there is the undercurrent of politics in what is truly a priority here. >> but the minute he said today and said ate couple of days ago, and if it is a systemic problem, but if it is veteran v.a. wide, i will make a decision, but the idea that you can't see a doctor is unimaginable. >> and the fact that you have hospitals starting in 1932, but colonel, bringing you in on this, the nail in the coffin was secretary shinseki saying it is isolated incident excluded to phoenix and then he had to say,

it is more widespread and getting out there on the limb saying it is not just phoenix. you know and i know, and i took my father to phoenix and you had to nknow that it was not just that hospital. >> and chris just laid out the sequence of events really well. shinseki started out by saying it is isolated incident, and then it is determined that it is not. and then i think that the real nail is when democrats started to abandon shinseki and the president had no other recourse but to get rid of shinseki. i think that is the sequence. >> is and when you have people like congresswoman tammy duckworth saying it is time, and she was the latest this morning amongst the democrats and widely respected, iraq war yvette ran, saying that shinseki would be a distraction and how do you survive after that, colonel? >> well, it is almost impossible, and bringing up the whole notion of the congressional support or the lack of it is important. if we remember back in

sequestration, the department of v veteran affairs was, i think the only department that actually got an increase in the amount of money that it with was getting in sequestration, and everybody else was cut. i think that the congress said, well, we will give them more money, because what they are doing is really, really important, and then to have it fail in the face of having been given lots more money, in a difficult time, i think that made life extremely difficult for the entire organization. >> chris, did the president do a good job of explaining not accepting the resignation of kathleen sebelius, and not of shinseki? >> no, it was not a clear distinction, and this is an echo of the president's own behavior and he was not alert of the problem of the rollout on his major piece of legislation and he let it go all of those months until we had the catastrophe, and so this lack of alertness and one thing i like about the

election nights and i love them like most of the people in the business do, because of the crackle, somebody wins and lose s and people want to see that in the government. they want the government to respond quickly and move and make decisions and be efficient and don't waste your money, and take care of the people they are supposed to take care of and we all feel for general shinseki, but what about the guy waiting right now for a doctor, and waiting three or for months who may have lost a limb or infection or who may really need help with something, and that is the concern. it is like the catholic church, my church, and they wait and worried about the priests and the card bishops, but they should have been worried a tbt altar boys. that is who they should have been worried about. >> and now, back to the -- >> well, it is a negative term, but it is appropriate. someone has to take responsibilities, accountability. these jobs, and i will go back to they are not hon errorrifics, but executive positions, and you are responsible if things go wrong. and some people don't move quick

enough, and maybe sebelius should have resigned and this guy should have offered the resignation a couple of days ago and better reacted today or tomorrow, but it is better two days ago. >> and chuck todd, i want to get you in and play what general shinseki said this morning with a group of homeless veterans who gave him a standing ovation, and let me play what he said. >> i was too trusting of some, and i accepted as accurate reports that i now know to be misleading with regard to the patient wait times. i can't explain the lack of integrity among some of the leaders of our health care facilities. this is something that i rarely encountered in 38 years of uniform, and i so will not defe defend it, because it is indefensible, but i can take responsibility for it. and i do. so given the facts that i now

know, i apologize as the senior leader of the department of veteran affairs. i extend an apology to the people whom i care most deeply abou about, and that is the veterans of this great country. >> and so, chuck, those comments made just before the meeting with the president, and too trusting of some people, an apologized and laid out a number of things that he would like to put in place, and what happened between that comment on stage and this meeting with the president? >> well, i think that this was, you know, i was told that this was fluid all day and all last night, and it is now looking in hindsig hindsight, clearly a moment to give general shinseki an opportunity to apologize in public and fall on the sword a little bit and do some firing and when you look back on it and when history is written on this moment, and we are here in real time and you can can see what is going on here, because they seem to have all of the ducks in the row by the time they came here to the white house. now, there is a larger issue here for the white house and that is finding a replacement, and that had been part of the

reason why there had been a d a delay here. politically, they knew what they had to do with shinseki, but it was too much heat that they were getting from the democrats, and there were already three democrats running for re-election hit on the air with tv attack ads on the v.a. and they had to do it, and they knew it, but they were concerned about the idea of the acting secretary was not necessarily there a long time the, and doing it anyway and finding a replacement. they don't have, when the president fired stan mcchrystal, he had david petraeus waiting in the wings, and that is why it was so easy, to rip that band-aid off and put somebody in there immediately and take away from the focus, but to find a petraeus-type figure to come in and break the eggs. that is what needs to be done. and there is an interesting pattern here that you heard from the president and you heard it from the crisis in the hhs in the rollout and heard it from the irs mess of the bureaucratic shenanigans there where the president says that the systems

are outdated and there is not a good reporting system here, and it makes you wonder if there is a department, and how many departments if they had a bunch of the media scrutiny and political scrutiny would hold up or would we find out the same thing that the systems are outdated, and too much patronage and too many people not reporting things up the chain of the command and the only way that you find out about the problems is when it something happens and then you have lifted up the rock and oh, my god, look at all of the bugs. >> and looking at all of the bugs, the president was asked if sloan gibson, someone who has been there since february of 2014, when he was confirmed by the senate even though he is acting and will be paired with rob nabors, can someone with this lack of experience if it is fair to say at this level come in to deal with this problem. >> well, the good news is that the new persons ask new questions and sometimes the new persons ask old questions and so having a fresh set of eyes is positive thing, and you can look

at that as far as the management issues are concerned, but look, they know they need to find somebody who has a little bit of political charisma and apolitical at the same time and so political charisma and apolitical at the same time and does that mean a republican or military veteran of such high esteem like ray od oodeearo. who is that? >> and we know that, chris, the president was talking about the v.a.s are the priority and we heard the speech at the graduation, and does this stick on the president? >> well, if he had let shinseki in office and refused the resignation, it would be on the president's head at this point, because if he had said that this chain of command is working and i have confidence in shinseki

and confidence in the people of power, he is part of the problem through the weekend, but it is important that he acted today. as i said before, better to have acted two days ago. >> and kcolonel jack jacobs, yor last thoughts on this, and what do you believe needs to be next? obviously, seeing the 1,700 men and women on the wait list, but what is the critical thing for our vets that needs to be done regarding the v.a. system now? >> well, it has to be fully computerized in talking to one another, and that has to be done, because whoever is running it demands that it be done. and whoever is going to be taking over has to demand himself that he has the authority to go along with the responsibility, and i don't think that anybody worth their salt is going to take it unless he has the ability to hire and fire and work closely with the congress can in order to get the money that he wants and to have them, the congress complicit into whatever reorganization he thinks that is necessary. you can't divide authority and

respon responsibility, and that is one of the big problems with the va. >> colonel jack jacobs, thank you so much, and chris and chuck, and we will be right back. ♪ [ girl ] my mom, she makes underwater fans that are powered by the moon. ♪ she can print amazing things, right from her computer. [ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. ♪ my mom works at ge. ♪ my mom works at ge. you've reached the age where you've learned a thing or two. this is the age of knowing what you're made of. so why let erectile dysfunction get in your way? talk to your doctor about viagra.

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he has worked hard to investigate and identify the problems with access to care is, but as he told me this morning, the va needs new leadership to address them. he does not want to be a distraction because his priority is to fix the problem and make sure our vets are getting the care they need. that was rick's judgment on behalf of his fellow veterans. and i agree, we don't have time for distractions. we need to fix the problem. >> fixing the problem, update now on breaking news, va secretary eric shinseki has resigned. the president accepting that resignation. let me bring in mark murray, are you there? >> yeah, hey, tamron. >> i think you have some people who say the president accepted the shinseki resignation because republicans would be less prone to a battle over who would lead

the va, that it would not get the gridlock that kathleen sebelius replacement for kathleen sebelius would have seen in confirmation hearing. what do you take on that theory? it seemed what the president was saying that given that, you know, if general shinseki had stayed around it would have been a distraction as the president was talking about. it would be very hard to fix the problems. the determination they made during the website woes last fall into the winter of last year, was that getting rid of kathleen sebelius having new confirmation hearings wouldn't solve the problem of getting the website fixed. this time around, what they want is having more breathing room, several months perhaps to be able to get to the bottom of this and get everything fixed and if general shinseki had stayed, it twob harder to have that breathing room. >> does this give the president some breathing room? obviously the pressure was there

to make a significant change, whether it was accepting the s resignati resignation. i don't know outside of that when you have the american legion as others as well as democrats in the house saying this was the logic cal step here. >> i do think it gives a little breathing room given that i think everyone realizes how complex these problems are and how systemic they are at the va. this wasn't just some act of wrong doing. this was something that dated back for decades and bureaucratic problems. if it goes back decades, it's going to take a long time to fix. a lot of people realize. separate from a policy fight this was turning into a political fight with midterm elections and democrats up for re-election who thought this wasn't a good thing for them, as chuck was pointing out to you, this was already appearing in tv ads and so getting -- they are getting rid of immediate political problem but still have a policy problem ahead of them and need to be able to fix it. >> mark murray, greatly

appreciate you joining us for breaking news of the day. that does it for this edition of "news nation." i'm tamron hall. we'll continue our coverage of general shinseki resigning as the head of the va. andrea mitchell will continue our wonch. [ brian ] in a race,

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[ male announcer ] ask your doctor about xarelto® today. for more information including savings options, download the xarelto® patient center app, call 1-888-xarelto, or visit teamxarelto.com. . right now, falling on his sword, president obama accepted the resignation of eric shinseki in the wake of the reports of misconduct and cover-ups plaguing va hospitals across the country. >> a few minutes ago secretary shinseki offered his own resignati resignation. with considerable regret, i accepted. >> it will it be enough to get care veterans deserve. >> i want every man and woman who serve under the flag to know, whether the tour has been over for decades or just about

to end, we will never stop working to do right by you and your families. good day, i'm andrea mitchell in washington where we begin with those breaking news from the white house, president obama today accepting the resignation of embattled veterans affair secretary telling the nation what happened during their face to face meeting in the oval office. >> rick's commitment to our veterans is unquestioned and his service to his country is exem playerry. i'm grateful for his service as are many veterans across the country. he has worked hard to investigate and identify the problems with access to care. but as he told me this morning, th