working shoulder to shoulder with florida health authority. there is a very aggressive effort under way to control mosquitos there. and pregnant women have been urged to stay away from the particular neighborhood that we're focused on. we will keep working as one team, federal, state and local, to slow and limit the spread of the virus. i want to be clear, our public health expert do not expect to see the kind of widespread outbreaks of zika here that we have seen in brazil or puerto rico. the kind of mosquitos most likely to carry zika are limited to regions of koun country but we cannot be complacent because we do expect to see more zika cases. even though symptoms for most people are mild, many may never even know they have it. we have seen that complications for pregnant women and their babies can be severe. so i again want to encourage every american to learn to do what they can to stop zika by

going to cdc.gov. congress needs to do its job. fighting zika costs money. helping puerto rico deal with its zika crisis costs money. research in the new vaccines and by the way, nih just announced the first clinical trials in humans, that cost money. that's why my administration proposed an urgent request for more funding back in february. not only did the republican-led congress not pass our request, they worked to cut it. and then they left for summer recess without passing any new funds for the fight against zika. meanwhile, our experts at the nih and cdc, folks on the front lines, have been doing their best in making do by moving funds from other areas. but now the nan money that we need to fight zika is rapidly running out. the situation is getting critical. without sufficient fundinging nih clinical trials and possibilities of a vaccine which is well within reach, could be

delayed. so this is not the time for politics. more than 40 u.s. servicemembers have contracted zika overseas. and 50 u.s. states we know of more than 1800 cases of zika connected to travel to infected areas and that includes nearly 500 pregnant women. zika is now present in almost part of puerto rico and now we have the first local transmission in florida and there will certainly be more. and meanwhile, congress is on a summer recess. a lot of folks talk about protecting americans from threats. well, zika is a serious threat to americans. especially babies. right now. so once again i want to urge americans to call their members of congress and tell them to do their job. help protect the american people from zika. with that, i'm going to take some questions. i'm going to start with someone

who just assumed the second most powerful office in the land, jeff mason, the new correspondents association president. also from reuters. jeff? >> thank you. hardly powerful. haen and happy birthday. >> thank you very much. >> you and other officials have said it is becoming more traditional terrorist group. are you satisfied that the united states and its allies have shifted to strategies sufficiently to address that change? and secondly, given your comments this week about donald trump's volatility and lack of fitness to be president, are you concerned he will be receiving security briefings about isis and other sensitive national security issues? >> i'm never satisfied with our response because if you're satisfied, that means the problem is solved, and it's not. so we just spent a couple hours meeting with my top national

security folks to look at what more can be done. it is absolutely necessary for us to defeat isil in iraq and syria. it is not sufficient, but it is necessary. as long as they have those bases, they can use their propaganda to suggest there is somehow some calla fate being born. that can insinuate itself in the minds of folks who can travel there or carry out terrorist takees. it is also destabilizing for countries in the region at a time when the country is already unstable. i am pleased with the progress we've made on the ground in iraq and syria. we're far from mosul and raqqa. but what we have shown is that when it comes to conventional

fights, isil can be beaten with partners on the ground so long as they've got the support from coalition forces that we've been providing. in the meantime, you see isil carry out external terrorist acts. and they've learned something they've adapted from al qaeda which at a much more centralized operation and tried to plan very elaborate takes. and what isil figured out is if they can convince a handful of people or even one person to carry out an take on a subway or at a parade or some other public venue, and kill scores of people as owe foesd thousa

as opposed to thousands of people, it still creates a concern that elevates their profile. so in some ways rooting out these networks for smaller less complicate aid tack says tougher because it doesn't require as many resources on their part or preparation. but it does mean that we've got to do even more to generate the intelligence and to work with our partners in order to degrade those networks. and the fact is that those networks will probably sustain themselves even after isil is defeated in rocka and mosul. but what we've learned from our efforts to defeat al qaeda, our efforts get better and we adapt

as well as eventually we will dismantle these networks also. this is part of the reason why, however, to keep our eye on the ball, not panic, not succumb to fear because isil can't defeat the united states of america or our nato partners. we can defeat ourselves though if we make bad decisions. and we have to understand that as painful and as tragic as these attacks are, that we are going to keep on grinding away, preventing them wherever we can. using a whole government effort to knock down their propaganda, take their key operatives off the battlefield and eventually we will win.

but if we start making bad decisions, killing civilians for school many some of these areas, instituting religious tests on who can enter the country. those kinds of strategies can end up back firing. in order for us to ultimately win this fight, we cannot frame this as a clash of civilizations between the west and islam. that plays exactly into the land of isil and the perversions-doct perversions-doctperversions -- putting forward. we will go by the law, in both tradition and the law, that if

somebody is a nominee, the republican nominee for president, they need to get a security briefing so that if they were to win, they are not starting from scratch. in terms of being prepared for this office. and i'm not going to go into details of the nature of the secure briefings that both candidates receive. what i will say is that they have been told these are classified briefings. and if they want to be president, they have to start acting like a president. and that means being able to receive these briefings and not spread them around. >> are you worried about that. >> i think i've said enough on that. mary bruce? >> thank you, mr. president. >> what is your response to critics who say the $400 million in cash you sent to iran was a

ransom payment? was it really simply a pure coincidence that of some that was payment held up for almost four decades was suddenly sent at the exact same time that american prisoners were released. and can you assure the american people that none of that money went to support terrorism? >> okay. it's been interesting to watch this story surface. some of you may recall, we announced these payments in january. many months ago. there wasn't a secret. we announced them. to all of you. josh did a briefing on them. this wasn't some nefarious deal. at the time we expressed that iran expressed in a tribunal

about money of theirs we had frozen that as a consequence of it working its way through the international tribunal it was the assessment of our lawyers where we are are at a point that there was significant litigation risk and we could cost ourselves billions of dollars. it was their advice and suggestion that we settle. and that's what these payments represent. it wasn't a secret. we were completely open with everybody about it and it is interesting to me how suddenly this became a story again. that's point one. point two, we don't pay ransom for hostages. we have hostages all around the world. i meet with their families. and it is heart breaking. and we have stood up an entire section of inner agency experts who devote all their time to working with these families to

get these americans out. but those families know that we have a policy that we don't pay ransom. and the notion that we would somehow start now in this high profile way and announce it to the world, even as we're looking into the faces of other hostage families whose -- whose loved ones are held hostage and say to them that we don't pay ransom, defies logic. that's point two. we don't pay ransom. we didn't here and we won't in the future. if we did, we would encourage americans to be targeted. much in the way of countries who do pay ransom have a lot more of their citizens taken by various groups. point number three.

is that the timing of this was in fact dictated by the -- by the fact that as a consequence of us negotiating around the nuclear deal, we had diplomatic negotiations and conversationes with iran for the first time in several decades. so the issue is not so much that it was a coincidence as it is that we were able to have a direct discussion. john kerry met with the minister and our ability to clear accounts on a number of issues at the same time converged. and it was important for us to take advantage of that opportunity both to deal with this litigation risk that had been raised. it was important for us to make sure that we finished the job on the iran nuclear deal. and since we were in a conversation with them, it was important for us to push them hard in getting these americans out.

and let me make a final point on this. it has been well over a year since the agreement with iran to stop its nuclear program was signed. and by all accounts it has worked exactly the way we said it was going to work. you will recall that there were all these horror stories about how iran was going to cheat and this wasn't going to work and iran was going to get $150 billion to finance terrorism and all these kinds of scenarios. and none of them have come to pass. and it's not just the assessment of our intelligence community. it's the assessment of the israeli military and intelligence community. the country most opposed to this deal that acknowledges this has been a game-changer that iran

has abided by the deal that they no longer have the sort of short term breakout capacity that would alilow them to develop nuclear weapons. so what i'm interested in is if there is news to be made, why not have some of these folks who were predicting disaster say, you know, this thing actually worked. that would be a shock. that would be impressive. if some of these folks who had said the sky is falling suddenly said, you know what, we were wrong, and we are glad that iran no longer has the capacity to break out in short term and develop a nuclear weapon. but of course that wasn't going to happen. instead what we have is the manufacturing of outrage in a story that we disclosed in january.

and the only bit of news that is relevant on this is that we paid cash. which brings me to my last point. the reason we todhad to give th cash is because we are so strict in maintaining sanction answers we don't have a banking relationships with iran that we couldn't send them a check. we could not wire the money. and it is not at all clear to me why it is that cash as opposed to a check or a wire transfer has made this into a news story. maybe because it feels like some spy novel or you know, some crime novel. because cash was exchanged.

the reason cash was exchange said because we don't have banking with iran. dh which is part of the pressure we could apply to them so they would close down a bunch of facilities that, as i remember, two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, was people's top fear and priority that we make sure iran doesn't have break out nuclear capacity. they don't. this worked. jeff. >> thank you, mr. president. repeatedly now donald trump has said that this election will be rigged against him, challenging the core foundation of our democratic system. can you promise the american people that this election will be conducted in a fair way and are you worried that comment like his could erode the public's faith in the outcome of the election. and if he does win, given that you just declared him unfit, what will you say to the american people?

>> and at the end of the day, it is the american people's decision. i have one vote. i have the same vote you do. i have the same vote that all of the voters who are eligible, all across the country have. i've offer mid opinion but ultimately it is the american people's decision to make collectively. and if somebody wins the election and they are president, then my constitutional responsibility is to peacefully transfer power to that individual and do everything i can to help them succeed. i don't even really know where to start on answering this question. of course the elections will not be rigged. what does that mean? the federal government doesn't run the election process.

states and cities and communities all across the country, they are the ones who set up the voting systems and the voting booths and if mr. trump is suggesting that there is a conspiracy theory that is weeg propagated, across the country, included in places like texas, where typically it's not democrats who are in charge of voting booths, that's ridiculous. that doesn't make any sense. and i don't think anybody would take that seriously. now we do take seriously, as we always do, our responsibility to monitor and preserve the integrity of the voting process. if we see signs that a voting machine or a system is vulnerable it hacking, then we inform those local authority who are running the elections that

they need to be careful. if we see jurisdictions that are violating federal laws, in terms of equal access and aren't providing ramps for disabled voters, or are discriminating in some fashion or are other wise violating civil rights laws, then the justice department will come in and take care of that. but this will be an election like every other election. and i think all of us at some points in our lives have played sports or maybe just played in a school yard or sand box and sometimes folks if they lose, they complain they got cheated. but i've never heard of somebody complaining about being cheated before the game was over. or before the score is even tallied.

so my suggestion would be, you know, go out there and try to win the election. if mr. trump is up 10 or 15 points on election day and ends up losing, then maybe he can raise some questions. that doesn't seem to be the case at the moment. barbara starr. >> thank you, mr. president. on the question of isis expansion you've been talking about, because you see them expanding around the world, because you see them trying to inspire attacks, what is your current level of concern about the homeland? you talked about the protection measures but what is your assessment about the possibility, your own intelligence adviser suggest it is possible about the direct isis threat to americans and, if i may follow up, someone saying,

what is your assessment today as you stand here about whether donald trump can be trusted with america's nuclear weapons. >> now on your second question and i'll sort of address this to any additional trump questions, i would ask all of you to just make your own judgment. i've made this point already multiple times. just listen to what mr. trump has to say and make your own decision about how you feel about him making decisions about for example the nuclear triad. >> it sounds like you're not comfortable. >> well, i answered this question a couple days ago and i thought i made myself clear.

i don't want to keep repeating it. i obviously have a strong opinion about the two candidates running here. one is very positive and one is not so much. and i think you will just hear any further questions directed at the subject i think you will hear pretty much variations on the same thing. what i can say is this is serious business and the person who is in the oval office and our secretary of defense and our joint chiefs of staff and outstanding men and women in uniform report to, they are counting on somebody who has the temperament and good judgment to make decisions to keep america safe. and that should be very much on

the minds of voters when they go into the voting booth in november. in terms of the threat that isil poses to the homeland, i think it is serious. we take it seer seriously. and as i said earlier, precisely because they are less concerned about big spectacular 9/11 style attacks, because they have seen the degree of attention they can get with smaller scale attacks using small arms or assault rifles or in the case of nice, france, a truck. you know, the possibility of, either a lone actor or small cell carrying out an attack that kills people is real. and that's why our intelligence

and law enforcement and military officials are working around the clock to try to, you know, anticipate potential attacks and to obtain the threads of people who might be vulnerable to brain washing by isil. and you know, we are constrained here in the united states to carry out this work in with a way that's consistent with our laws and prezusumptions of innocence and the fact that we prevent these attacks from being carried out as well as we do, without a lot of fanfare, is a testament to the work these folks are doing. but it is always a risk.

and some of you may have read the article in the new york times today. i guess it came out last night on-line. about this individual in germany who had confessed and given himself up and then explained his knowledge of how isil's networks worked. there was a paragraph in there that some may have caught and we don't know, you know, for a fact that this is true. but according to this reporting, the individual indicated that isil recognizes it is harder to getty operatives into the united states but the fact that we have gun law answers that barred them

from purchase and they could go in and buy weapons, that may a homegrown extremist strategy more attractive to them. and those are the hardest to stop because by definition, if somebody doesn't have a record, if it is not triggering something, then it means that anticipating their actions becomes that much more difficult. and this is why the military strategy we have in syria and iraq is necessary but not sufficient. we have to do a better job of disrupting networks and those networks are more active in europe than they are here. but we don't know what we don't know and so, it's conceivable that there are some networks here that could be activated. but we also have to get to the messaging that can reach a troubled individual over the internet. and do a better job of disrupting that.

and what i've told my team is that although we have been working on this for five, six, seven years, we have to put more resource niece it. it want be an after thought. it is something that we have to really focus on. this is also why how we work with, the muslim-american community, the values that we affirm about their patriotism and their sacrifice and our fellow feeling with them is so important. one of the reasons that we don't have networks and cells that are as active here as there are in certain parts of europe is because the muslim-american community is extraordinarily patriotic and largely

successful. and fights in our military and serves as our doctors and nurse answers there are communities in which they are raising their kids. with love of country and rejection of violence. and that has to be affirmed consistently. and if we screw that up then we will have bigger problems. gregory of usa today. >> thank you, mr. president. yesterday you commuted sentences of 214 federal inmates. the largest single day grant in the history of the american presidency. i wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your clemency process. one is, you've talked about this as low-level drug offenders who got sentences. about a quarter also had firearms. offenses. given your overall philosophy on firearms, can you reconcile that

for us and previously you sent a memo saying there was a predisposition against firearms in clemency. why did you change your mind on that in and also the other part of the ledger is pardons. more since calvin coolidge and fewer since john adams. why is that? is the focus on taking energy away from pardons? especially since these are -- you talk about second chances of full pardon would give people a better chance at second chances. and finally, one other thing on pardons. many of your predecessors in final days, presidency say they reserve that for more sensitive pardons. can we expect you to do that? >> i appreciate the question, gregory. i haven't had a chance to talk about this much. this is an effort that i'm really proud of. it is my view shared by democrats and republicans alike

in many quarters that as successful as we've been in reducing crime in this country, the extraordinary rate of incarceration, of nonviolent offenders has created its own set of problems that are devastating. entire communities have been ravaged where largely men but some women are taken out of those communities. kids are now growing up without parents. it perpetuates a cycle of poverty. and disorder in their lives. it is disproportionately young men of color that are being arrested at higher rates, charged and convicted at higher

rates and imprisoned for longer sentences. and so, ultimately the fix on this is criminal justice reform and i still hold that hope that bipartisan effort that is taking place in congress can finish the job. and we can have a criminal justice system, at least at the federal level, that is at least both smart on crime, effective on crime, but recognizes the need for proportionality and sentencing and the need to rehabilitate those who commit crimes. but even as that process is reinformed, we want to change that process that had become stalled. over the course of several years. partly because it is politically risky.

and you can commute somebody and they commit a crime and the politics of it is tough. everyone remembers the willie horton. frankly, a number of my advisors early in my presidency is, be careful about that. but i thought it was very important for us to send a clear message that we believe in the principles behind criminal justice reform even if ultimately we need legislation. so we have focused more on commutations than we have on pardons. by the time i leave office, the number of pardons we grant will be roughly in line with what other presidents have done. but standing up this commutat n

commutations process required a lot of effort and energy and it is not like we got a new shrug of money to do it. so you've got limited resources. primary job of the justice department is to prevent crime and to convict those who have committed crimes and to keep the american people safe and that means that you've had this extraordinary and effort by people in the justice department to go above and beyond and to review what has taken place. and we've been able to get organizations around the country to screen and help people apply. and what we have -- the main criteria that i've tried to set is if under today's lawis, because there have been changes and how we charge nonviolent drug offenses, if under today's

charges, their sentences would be sub stan blly lower than the charges that they received, if they got a life sentence but a u.s. attorney or justice department indicates that today they would be likely to get 20 years and they have served 25, then what we try to do is to screen through and find those individuals who have paid their debt to society, that have behaved themselves and tried to reform themselves while incarcerated and we think have a good chance of being able to use that second chance well. on the firearms issue, what i've done is to try to screen out folks who seem to have a per pensity for violence. and these are just hypotheticals. but there may be a situation

where a kid at 18 was a member of a gang. a had a firearm. did not use it in the offense he was charged in. there is no evidence that he used it in any violent offense. it is still a firearms charge and enhancement but he didn't use it. he is now 3 4 3 /* /- 48 or 38, to years later, and has an unblemished prison record. gone back to school and got his ged. drug treatment. has the support of the original judge that presideed. support of the u.s. attorney that charged him. support of the warden. has family that loves him. in that situation, the fact that he had 20 years earlier an enhancement because he had a firearm is different than a situation where somebody is

engaged in armed robbery and shot somebody. in those cases, that is still something that i'm concerned about. our focus has really been on people who we think were overcharged and people who we do not believe had a propensity towards violence. in terms of your last question about sort of last-minute pardons that are granted, the process that i put in place, is not going to vary depending on how close i get to the election. so it will be reviewed by the pardon attorney, it'll be reviewed by my white house council, and you know, i'm going to, as best as i can, make these

decisions based on the merits as opposed to political considerations. okay? and finally, jim is retiring after 30 years at nbc. he has did not an outstanding job, mostly covering the department of defense. this may be my last press conference here. so i just wanted to thank jim for the extraordinary career he's had and great job he's done. and he gets the last question. >> thank you, very much, mr. president. >> you bet. >> first back to isis and iraq and syria. your very own national counterterrorism operation has found that despite other than the decisive defeats that u.s. and coalition have dealt isis on the battlefield, that they've expanded their threat worldwide to include as many as 18 operational basis, in the six years you've been dealing, do

you feel any personal disappointment that there hasn't been more progress and in any discussions you've had with the u.s. military and your intelligence agencies, have you come up with any new ideas on how to deal or defeat isis? >> every time there's a terrorist take, i feel disappointment because i would like it prevent all of them. and that's true not just when the attacks were in europe or the united states. when you read stories about attacks in lebanon or iraq or afghanistan, distant part of the world that don't get as much attention, they get my attention. because that's somebody's kid and somebody's mom. and that's somebody who was just going about his business.

and mindlessly, senselessly, this person was murdered. so i haven't gotten numb to it. it bugs when whenever it happens and wherever it happens. and we are constantly pushing ourselves to see, are there additional ideas that we can deploy to defeat this threat? now, it is important that we recognize terrorism as a tactic as been around for a long time. and if you look at the '70s or '80s or '90s, there was some terrorist activities somewhere in the world that was brutal. and as much as i would like to

say during my presidency we could have eliminated terrorism completely, it's not surprising that that hasn't happened and i don't expect that will happen under the watch of my successors. i do think that because of our extraordinary efforts, the homeland is significantly safer than it otherwise would be. now in some ways this is arguing the counter factuals but the attacks we prevent i take great satisfaction in and i am grateful for the extraordinary work that our teams do. i don't think there's any doubt that had we not destroyed al qaeda in the fatah, that more americans would have been killed. and we might have seen more attacks like we saw on 9/11.

and we have maintained vigilance, recognizing that those threat still remain. those aspirations in the mind of the folks still remain. but it is much harder for them to carry out large scale attacks like that than it used to be. what we have seen is that the lower level attacks carried out by fewer operatives for an individual with less sophisticated and less expensive weapons can do real damage. and that, i think, points for the need for us to not just have a military strategy. not just have a traditional counterterrorism strategy that's designed to bust up networks and catch folks before they carry out their attacks, though those are still necessary and we have

to be more and more sophisticated about how we carry those out, it still requires us to have much greater cooperation with our partners around the world. but it point to the fact that we're going to have to do a better job in draining the ideology that is behind these attacks. that right now is emanating largely out of the middle east and a very small fraction of the muslim world. and a perversion of islam that has taken root and has been rbo charged over the internet. and that is appealing to even folks who don't necessarily know anything about islam and aren't even practicing islam in any serious way, but i have all

kinds of psychosis that latch on to this and magnify themselves. and that is tougher. that involves both changes in geo politics in places like syria. it requires cultural changes in regions like the middle east and north africa that are going through generational changes and shift as the old order collapses. it requires psychology and thinking about how do these messages of hate reach individuals and are there ways in which we can intervene ahead of time. and all that work is being done. and we've got the very best people at it. and each day they are making a difference in saving lives. not just here but around the world.

but it's a challenge precisely because if you're successful 99% of the time, that 1% can still mean heart break for familyis. and it is difficult because in a country let's say of 300 million people here in the united states, if 99.9% of people are immune from this hateful ideology, but .1 of 1% are per acceptable to it, that's a lot of people running around and we can't always anticipate them ahead of time because they may not have criminal records. so there is a challenge. i just want to end on the point that i made earlier. how we react to this is as important as the efforts we take to destroy isil, prevent these

networks from penetrating. you can't separate those two things out. the reason it's called terrorism as opposed to just a standard war, is that these are weaken y weak enemies that can't match us in conventional power. but what they can do is make us scared. and when societies get scared, they can react in ways that undermine the fabric of our society. it makes us weaker. and makes us more vulnerable. and creates politics that divide us in ways that hurt us over the long-term. and so if we remain steady and steadfast and vigilant, but also

take the longview and maintain perspective and remind ourselves of who we are and what we care about most deeply and what we cherish and what is good about this country and what's good about the international order and civilization, that was built in part because of the sacrifices of our men and women after 20th century full of world war. if we remember that, then beer -- then we're going to be okay. but we will still see episodically these tragedies and we're going to have to keep working on it until we make things better. >> all right. you may only because this is you're retiring. but i hope it's not too long. >> no, no. >> i'm going to be late for my birthday dinner. >> happy birthday. >> thank you. >> you alluded earlier to the

negotiations between u.s. and russia over military operations in syria over militant forces there. presumably in exchange for whatever russian influence could be imposed on the regime. now i'm sure you're not surprised some military is not in for that deal and some think it is a deal with the devil. a what makes you so confident that you can trust the russians and vladimir putin? >> i'm not confident we can trust the russians or vladimir putin which is why we have to have a cessation of hostile its that puts an end to the yarl bo aerial bombing and civilian death that we have seen carried out by the assad regime. and russia may not get there either because they don't want

to or because they don't have sufficient input over assad. that's what we will test. we go into this without any blinders on. we're very clear that russia has been willing to support a murderous regime that has, and an individual in assad, who has destroyed his country just to cling ton power. what started with peaceful protests has led to a shattering of an entire pretty advanced society. and so whenever you're trying to broker any kind of deal with individuals like that or a country like that, you've got go in there with skepticism. on the other hand, if we are able to get a genuine cessation of hostilities that prevents

indiscriminate bonding, that protects civilians and allows a sort of pathway. then we have to try. i have been wrestling with this thing now for a lot of years. i'm pretty confident that a big chunk of my gray hair comes out of my syria meetings. and there is not a meeting that i don't end by saying is there something else we could be doing that we haven't thought of. is there a plan f, g, h that we

think would lead to a resolution of this issue so the syrian people can put their lives back together again and we can bring peace and relieve the refugee crisis that's taken place and the options are limited when you have a civil war like this, when you have a ruler who doesn't care about his people, when you've got terrorist organizations that are brutal and would impose their own kind of dictatorship on people, and you have a moderate opposition and ordinary civilians who are often outgunned and outmanned. and you know, that's a very

difficult situation to deal with. but we've got to give it a chance. there are going to be some bottom lines that we expect for us to cooperate with russia beyond the sort of deconfliction we are currently doing and that means restraint on the part of the regime that so far has not been forthcoming. early on in this version of the cessation of hostilities we probably saw some lives saved and some lessening of violence. the violations of this cessation have grown to the point where it just barely exists, particularly up in the northwestern part of the country. so we are going to test and see if we can get something that sticks. and if not, then russia will have shown itself very clearly to be an irresponsible actor on the world stage that is

supporting a murderous regime and will have to be -- will have to answer to that on the international stage. all right? thank you very much, everybody. >> boy, that last answer there, probably the sound bite that you will hear a lot of. a big chunk of his gray hair comes from his syrian meetings. welcome to a quick version of "mtp daily." lot to discuss from the president's press conference. we have a big shakeup in the 2016 race for president. the brand new poll numbers in just a moment. quickly, a highlight reel from the president's news conference at the pentagon. just wrapped up as you just saw. he spoke for a little over an hour, touched on a variety of subjects including zika. obviously this was an isis briefing so a lot of isis, trump, the iran nuclear deal, criminal justice reform, russia, president slammed the controversy that he says is being made up around the cash payment to iran that critics

have labeled as a ransom payment. he dismissed it as a manufactured crisis. take a listen. >> we announced these payments in january. many months ago. there wasn't a secret. we announced them to all of you. josh did a briefing on them. this wasn't some nefarious deal. we do not pay ransom for hostages. >> he spent a long time on this question, came across a bit defensive, talked about why we are sending cash, we don't have banking arrangements with iran so that's why they had to send cash. kept claiming it just happened to happen simultaneously, the negotiations, both when it came to the hostages as well as this deal. as we have seen from the president in recent press conferences, he did have some strong language for donald trump. lot of questions about trump and the president mocked trump's

warning that the election will be rigged. >> i don't even really know where to start on answering this question. of course the elections will not be rigged. what does that mean? i don't think anybody would take that seriously. if mr. trump is up 10 or 15 points on election day and ends up losing, then maybe he can raise some questions. that doesn't seem to be the case at the moment. >> jim miklaszewski got a nice shout-out from the president. first, the news from the breaking poll. post-convention, here it is, we have a nine-point lead. clinton/kaine at 47%, trump/pence at 38% in a head-to-head matchup. previous one before the conventions, clinton was up 5%. she maintains the nine point lead in the four-way when you add johnson and jill stein.

no real movement there. takes evenly from both. clinton's support overall is up two points since last month before the conventions. everyone else's support dropped a bit. folks, let's put a nine-point lead in perspective. in 2008, candidate barack obama never had a lead that large until very late in october and ended up winning by seven points on that front. i want to go back to the pentagon. man of the moment there, jim miklaszewski, some day give the president a lesson on how to pronounce western european names. i want to get to the nut of something you asked, you asked any new ideas, anything you have come up with. did you hear anything new out of the president? your ear was looking for that. anything new when it came to dealing with isis? >> reporter: unfortunately not, chuck. we have been hearing this for two, three, four, five years already. this is an intractable problem

at the moment that is going to, as a matter of fact, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general martin dempsey said before he retired this would be a decades-long problem. by the way, i want to thank the president for the shout-out. you know, previous presidents and secretaries of defense and generals have been longing to say oh, good, you're retiring. >> that's pretty good. i want you to do some sort of realtime fact checking or sort of diplo-speak checking. the president to me got very defensive on the iran question. spent a long time explaining it and tried to say well, no matter what it looks like, this is two separate deals and this is what happens when you restart diplomacy and this was an old account that we had to clear. truth, reality, what did you hear? >> reporter: i heard a lot of

frustration and the matter of fact, i doubt the president or anybody no matter what the explanation is, is going to convince those who believe that this was a direct pay-off, a ransom pay-off, for the release of those americans. i don't think he changed any minds here today and i don't think they can be changed. you will always find the naysayers and doubters who bee this was a pay-off. but he gave a the reasons why the u.s. doesn't do it. nevertheless, to many, the timing was just too coincidental. >> there will be a lot -- he brought up the families of hostages that he talks with and they, many of them have been begging the u.s. government actually to pay some ransom when necessary. it does sound like those complaints are now going to get louder from these families. >> reporter: well, you can only imagine the frustration, the heartbreak these families go through when one of their loved ones has been kidnapped.

i can't imagine going to bed at night and not thinking about your loved one in the custody of some of these terrorist organizations. so i think even the president would give those families a bye. not necessarily agree that ransom should be paid, but he would definitely empathize with their grief and what they're going through. >> it's not surprising, two of the most interesting questions asked were both asked by you. i want to talk about your second question and the coordination with russia. this seems to be a particularly disastrous week when it comes to coordination with russia, when we think of what russian military attacks just did to assad opponents. >> reporter: that's right. quite frankly, as i mentioned in my question, there are a lot of people in the military, leadership, that don't agree with even negotiating with the russians at this point. of course, the european allies are afraid that the president is trying to make a deal with the

devil. he sounded -- he went into such depth that it almost sounded like he understood why people are doubting this and he sounded a little bit defensive. >> i thought the same thing, as he kind of knows that maybe it ain't working out so well. jim miklaszewski, great to talk with you. we will be back tomorrow with more "mtp daily." "with all due respect" starts eight seconds late. i'm john heilemann. >> i'm mark halperin. with all due respect for joe biden's gift for his boss, it's only the second best presidential birthday gift ever in american history. ♪ happy birthday to you