mother in-law with a glad bag, full of trash. what happens next? nothing. only glad has febreze to neutralize odors for 5 days. guaranteed. even the most perceptive noses won't notice the trash. be happy. it's glad. this just in to msnbc, video of president-elect donald trump arriving in baltimore, just moments ago. he is attending the army/navy game set to kick off this hour. good afternoon, everyone. thanks for joining us today. i'm betty nguyen here at msnbc world headquarters in new york. breaking news out of the trump trance ig, nbc news learned the president-elect has chosen exxon

mobil ceo rex tillerson as secretary of state. until trump makes an announcement things can obviously change. tillerson has spent his entire career at exxon mobil previously serving as liaison between the company and russia. he's known to have a close business republican with vladimir putin who awarded him the order of friendship, one of russia's highest honors for foreigners a few years ago. kasie hunt joins us by phone from the army navy game in baltimore. you spoke to john mccain at that game. what was his reaction? >> hi, betty. pretty interesting one, actually. the one concern here for the trump team, and this has been true broadly of many of his cabinet picks but particularly in this case has been how will the confirmation hearings go on capitol hill? will it be okay with republicans to vote in favor of many of these picks? it was an issue that rudy giuliani, quite frankly, had if he faced potential confirmation as secretary of state and i

spoke briefly to senator john mccain. he's here attending the army/navy game and he along with some of his other colleagues like senator lindsey graham expressed reservations about russia's actions. they've been very vocal about it. mccain is planning hearings into russia's activities as a separate subcommittee on the armed services committee which he chairs. take a listen to what he had to say when i asked him if he had any concerns about tillerson's nomination as secretary of state and his relationship with vladimir putin. >> vladimir putin is a thug and a bully and a murderer and i believe that the relationship between mr. tillerson and vladimir putin needs to be examined. >> reporter: so that tells you there are going to be some tough questions from at least one republican in the course of this confirmation hearing, and i do think one thing and andrea mitchell touched on this in her reporting over the course of today. it will be interesting to see if the trump team considers or

reconsiders or if the nomination is affected in any way by how the reaction is on capitol hill from the members who will have to be confirming it. early signs from john mccain of a little bit of potential trouble ahead, betty. >> kasie hunt in baltimore, thank you. joining us is michael mcfaul, former u.s. ambassador to russia. thanks for being with us today. >> sure. >> ambassador, what does this pick tell you about the relationship that trump wants with russia? >> well, there are very few americans private sector, nongovernmental officials that have a personal relationship with president putin. rex tillerson is one of those. there was a joint venture that he negotiated personally with mr. putin, and putin's very close personal friend igo igor sechin and at its height they thought it would be upwards

of $300 billion in terms of a joint venture. i sat with putin personally one day when he explained to president obama that this was one of the best events in u.s./russian relations in decades. so if you want to have a better relationship with putin personally, mr. tillerson is somebody that could help do that. >> but ambassador, john mccain as we just heard had some tough words for tillerson at the army/navy game he's concerned with his ties to russia and mccain's long time aid mark salter tweeted this. "tillerson's ties to russia should lead to a rough confirmation and a no vote." do you share that same sentiment? >> yes, of course i do. i'm worried, bus with no disrespect to mr. tillerson, i think's that he been a successful ceo for exxon mobil. i knew his team well but their focus is energy. they have a singular focus and foreign policy especially when you're secretary of state is

multidimensional. you have to deal with russia on ukraine and on syria, and north korea, and human rights, and nato, and all of those issues, and it's not just about oil exploration in russia. so i mean, he needs to get a fair hearing and we need to know about his ties and we need to know about his views, but it's not enough to have as a policy the goal of good relations with mr. putin. the policy needs to be about american national interests, and then we need to think about how those relationships with people like putin can advance them. so far we haven't had that discussion about hour national interests. >> on the broad spectrum, what signal would a tillerson pick send to our allies? >> well it depends on which allies you're talking about, but if you're an ally in estonia, latvia or lithuania, this is terrible news. there's just i've already heard from those people by the way. i have lots of friends in

europe. they see this as yet another step towards warming relations with mr. putin, and you know, ignoring of their interests. same with ukrainians by the way, they are deeply worried we're now going to cut a deal with putin over sanctions. remember, exxon mobil's chief business partner in russia, igor sechin is on the sanctions list right now. you can well, you don't have to have a ph.d. in russian studies to predict that exxon mobil would like to see their chief business partner lifted from that sanctions list, that signals some very troubling news for countries like ukraine. >> interesting tie there is. all right former ambassador mike mcfaul thank you for your insight. >> thanks for having me. joining me is msnbc's ali velshi. what do we know about his background and tenure?

>> like a lot of people from energy companies, betty, and the top 100 companies in america, he's a lifer. he's been there for a long time. he's been there since the 1970s, been the ceo since 1996. he earned a lot of money, got over $150 million in exxon mobil stock, and he followed lee raymond's steps, lee raymond was his predecessor, followed his steps making exxon mobil into not just an oil production company but sort of a multilevel what they call upstream and downstream market or production and he made exxon mobil into a company that's expert at doing things in particular that the russians can't do including drilling for oil in the arctic ocean, which is something they were set to do in partnership with russia right before, within days of the sanctions being imposed on russia, because it went into ukraine. rex tillerson not only as the ambassador has a close relationship with russia with vladimir putin, with business interests in russia, but he's on

record as saying that he does not believe sanctions work generally and in specific with respect to russia. so our nato allies, remember, the border states that border russia in europe our nato allies they are very concerned about this, but he has been a very good hand at the head of exxon. >> here's something else that's interesting. according to his latest sec ownership filing tillerson owns more than $233 million of exxon mobil stock and he stands to get a pretty good tax incentive if he sells that stock in government treasuries. >> right, so that's a particular deal that a lot of people might benefit from in this particular cabin cabinet. when you have to liquidate to meet federal government requirements of conflict of interest, you do get preferential tax treatment so that is one pretty good silver lining around the cloud for rex tillerson. i will say the ceos particularly long timers don't tend to like to sell their stock unless

there's some particular reason to do that. if you're going to go do it and get the tax break that's the silver lining around the cloud. remember this say guy who earns in the multiple tens of millions of dollars a year, just in salary and other compensation, not even counting his stock that he holds. so it is interesting that donald trump is succeeding at getting so many people out of the business world into what he's doing. there is a perception issue though particularly for many who voted for donald trump and i'm getting a lot of criticism for saying this to chanel an hour ago we're dwran draining the swamp of government lifers and replacing folks from goldman sachs and exxon mobil. at what point can you put a pharmaceutical ceo in and big tobacco. these are companies most americans don't feel give them a fair shake at the expense of profitability. i will remind people that most americans who have a 401(k) that is broadly diversified that

invests in the s&p 500 or the dow 30, you probably own exxon mobil shares as well. so you get it coming and going. >> all right, msnbc's ali ve velsshi, thank you. >> my pleasure. >> kellyanne conway here is what she had to say on putin and cabinet picks. >> is the candidate's position on putin part of the criteria? >> the candidates being tillerson and romney? >> yes, ma'am. >> i believe, chuck, everybody should recognize it is president-elect trump's position on putin that will dominate the secretary of state role at foggy bottom and across the blown. >> ying me is michael steele, former senior adviser to jeb bush and former spokesman for house speaker john boehner, rick wade, and nick, msnbc contributor and political report forefor the "new york times." thanks for being with me. michael, let me start with you. along with tillerson, general mike flynn has had dealings with

putin so how much will these new revelations complicate their confirmation hearings? >> i don't think there's any surprise to anyone that donald trump's position on russia and relationship with russia is somewhat different than bipartisan consenses and american foreign policy. that should and will be an issue in the confirmation hearings for the men. at the same time they fit the mold of what donald trump is looking for in most of his cabinet, which is very successful business leaders and military leaders. >> nick, let me bring you in. mark salter, a former adviser and confidant to john mccain tweeted just yesterday that mccain could vote against confirmation for tillerson. so how do you see this playing out? >> you know, it's fascinating, betty. typically the senate will give some deference to a president from their own party in a nominations for staff and for secretaries. we're seeing as michael said a real shift in the basic assumptions about foreign policy for the gop that have reigned

for 20 years and john mccain is basically a cold war era hawk originally. he's skeptical of russia. he thinks russia san enemy not an ally and i wonder how many republican also believe that and go along with him or follow along with president trump in this new direction he seems to want to set with russia. >> i want to turn to the other big story talking about today, russian hacks during the election, that they were actually designed to boost trump's candidacy. rick, senate democrats have pushed for much of this intelligence to be made public. will they succeed? >> you know, the reality is, whether or not the russian government tampering with our electoral process swayed the election to donald trump is one issue. but the bigger issue is, did it happen? and i think i don't understand why this is such a difficult issue on the minds of washington leaders and president trump, president-elect trump. there ought to be a bipartisan approach and solution to this. do an investigation, let's find

out what really happened. did the russians tamper with our electoral process, because this has to do with the very integrity of our democracy, in our electoral process, so there are a lot of answers that still need to be found out about russia's vision in the united states government. >> michael, is it concerning to you that the trump transition immediately cast doubt on the s cia's findings? >> no question countries around the globe seek to influence the country's election. countries around the globe have interest in our foreign policy. at the same time i think what we need to do is follow the facts and see where that leads. if laws and rules were broken there ought to be consequences. >> but they went on to say these are the same people that said saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction, so it's not only pushing back on it but almost a bit of a slap in the face as well. nick, let me bring you in again. sean spicer pushed back on the "new york times" reporting that the rnc was also hacked. listen to what he said.

>> the intelligence is wrong. it didn't happen. we offered the "new york times" conclusive proof that it didn't happen. they refused to look at that, ignored it because it didn't fit the narrative. the bottom line is the intelligence is wrong. >> let me get your response to that. >> i can't speak for "the times." i'll stand which my colleagues in the washington bureau who wrote the story taken scores a need to bring it out in the public to see what is in there, and put it out there for the public to see. >> michael, rick and nicholas, thank you all for joining us. we appreciate it. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. much more on rex tillerson still ahead this hour but next, louisiana holds its runoff election today to determine its new senator. what's at stake in that race for both parties and why is the democratic candidate calling out members of his own party? [engine revving] ♪

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welcome back everyone. people in louisiana are casting their votes for the next u.s. senator and deciding between republican john kennedy and democrat foster campbell. president-elect donald trump visited baton rouge yesterday to show his support for kennedy. >> he's a good person. and somebody that i've known over the years and he's somebody that's worked hard for you over the years. if you go to the polls, he's going to win. if you don't go to the polls he's not going to win, and if he doesn't win, i've got myself a problem in washington. >> even though this race is the democrats last hope to pick up a senate seat campbell says his party hasn't given him much support. >> the democratic party to be honest with you, the national democratic party, the state democratic party has helped, the national democratic party has not helped. and it's a shame, but we didn't need their help, if we needed it we would have been in trouble. >> so if kennedy wins, the

runoff election, republicans will have a 52-48 senate majority in the next congress. still ahead, north carolina governor path mccrory conceding the impact his loss will have on the lgbt controversy and north carolina's controversial hb2 law. and tune in monday night, chris hayes and senator bernie sanders head to kenosha, wisconsin, to take questions from voters during a special town hall event. don't miss "all in americas: bernie sanders in trump country" monday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc. [burke] at farmers, we've seen almost everything,

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in north carolina after nearly a month of claiming voter fraud, this week republican governor pat mccrory conceded the race to state attorney general roy cooper. the win is celebrated by the lgbt community. joining me for more is transgender activist candace cox. >> hi, thank you. >> do you feel this was a

referendum on equality? >> yes, absolutely, i do. i think that what we saw was the lgbt community along with our allies here in north carolina stood up and said that inequality and discrimination is just not something that north carolina stands for. >> there was a lot of pressure on mccrory over this law. did it cost him, because he's now the first sitting north carolina governor elected to a four-year term to lose a re-election bid. >> i think it absolutely hurt the governor. i think that hb2 really proved to be the thorn in the side, to be the straw that breaks the camel's back for governor mccrory. as you said, it's historic that this is the first time we've had a sitting governor run for re-election who did not win, and i think the hb2 is definitely to blame. >> a huge backlash erupted after the bill passed back in march as

you know, in a state that thrives for college athletics, it spoke values the nba followed suit along with several recording artists refusing to hold concerts in the state. do you think all of that influenced public opinion? >> i think that that probably had more influence on public opinion than some of the rhetoric we saw here. >> really? >> absolutely. people pay more attention to pop culture than they do to politics, it's more sensationalized. >> the monetary losses as of september was at $400 million and that number is growing. so if the new governor repeals the law, do you see the investments coming back? >> i do believe that over time north carolina can rebound from that financial loss. i think that our governor-elect is going to have a lot of work cut out for him because unfortunately our house here is still overwhelmingly republican,

and they are not looking like they want to repeal house bill two. >> that's my next thing, are you getting any assurance from anyone that it will be repealed? >> not so far, from the republican leadership here in the house. however, governor-elect cooper, he has been extremely supportive of the lgbtq community here his whole time as attorney general. he's really proven himself so he'll look for every possible way can he try to make life better for us, while we still try to figure out how we can influence the republicans to understand that a full repeal is the only option. . >> thank you for joining us today. >> thank you so much. breaking news out of turkey, about to people have been hurt in a pair of explosions near a major soccer stadium in istanbul. witnesses say they also heard gunfire and an apparent attack on police who have been patrolling the game inside that

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hello everyone. i'm betty nguyen. at the bottom of the hour we are following breaking news, sources tell nbc's andrea mitchell that rex tillerson president and ceo of exxon mobil is president-elect trump's pick for secretary of state. tillerson has spent his entire career with a company that is now exxon mobil and also has close business ties to russian president vladimir putin. the trump transition team has not confirmed this news and nothing is uncertain or is certain that is until the president-elect makes an announcement. they say the president-elect and tillerson did meet today at trump tower. let's get more reaction on this and i want to go to nbc's hans nichols at the white house. hans, this development with tillerson comes as the white house orders an investigation into russia's hacking of the presidential election, so how might this complicate the matters? >> well, when the new president comes in, when donald trump moves in the oval office waiting

for him will be a report that will delineate if true what role russia or any other foreign national or state or nonstate actor played in trying to tip the election scales in his favor. remember, nbc has confirmed that the cia's assessment is that russia intervened on behalf of donald trump against hillary clinton. that report will be waiting for him, his national security adviser michael flynn sits in that corner office here at the, in the west wing and then potentially his secretary of state rex tillerson who has a lock history working in russia, as he does in other countries especially in the middle east, if you are an oilman you will have had relationships, contacts, conversations with folks in russia and the middle east. >> hans nichols at the white house, thank you. joining me on the phone is kurt volker. mark salter tweeted that tillerson would sell out nato and the senate should vote no.

do you agree? >> well i'm not going to take a position on how things should be handled in the senate. i think that's something the senate will ask questions and see what kind of answers he has. just thinking about tillerson, he has a lot of international experience. he's been the head of a major organization. he's been a successful ceo, so he brings a lot of skills, at the same time there's clearly going to be questions about how he would approach the job of secretary of state. very different representing the interests of the country than it is representing the interests of one company, and i think that's what people want to be asking him about, how does he see that role going forward, assuming he is the nominee. >> salter said he would sell out nato. what are your thoughts on that statement? >> well during the campaign, president-elect trump said several things about nato that were taken to be very critical by nato allies, saying we would weigh whether to come to their defense based on whether they had paid their bills or not, calling into question our

defense commitment and he later moderated that tone and said he's a great supporter of nato and believes nato should do more on counterterrorism and it is doing more so i think we shouldn't lead to conclusions and we should wait and see what positions are actually taken. i certainly don't know tillerson personally, and i don't have any reason to think he would not be interested in doing tfor our country. >> do you think mccain will vote no on tillerson? >> i can't speak for senator mccain. >> his ties with russia with exxon's involvement in energy and oil business does that concern you at all? >> you know, i think that someone who has been in that position will have had a lot of international experience. they will have dealt with all kinds of governments from democratic governments to dictatorships, will have seen a lot of things. the job of someone in that position is to look out for the interests of the company and the shareholders and to be

profitable, and he's been very successful with that in dealing with challenging circumstances. it's a different question what is someone who has that background and knowledge and skills bring to the job of secretary of state, that's something we have to find out over time. >> kurt volker former u.s. ambassador to nato thanks for joining us today. >> thank you. a new report says russia may not stop with just meddling with u.s. politics, buzzfeed reporting u.s. intelligence officials warned european allies about russia hackers in their elections this year. but in many cases the warning came after russia breached their systems, too. report says u.s. intelligence agencies sent warnings to the uk, france and germany, among others. joining me from paris is msnbc contributor christopher dickey, world news editor at "the daily beast." i with a tonight start with andrea mitchell's report trump will pick rex tillerson for sec sta

sec stare of state. what do you make of this news? >> as i was listening to the other comments i was thinking the last time we had a person who had been a big executive with a big oil related company it was dick cheney as vice president, and he seemed to confuse throughout his term the interests of his company and the interests of the united states, and he led us into a very, very dark hole in iraq. so i can't say that i think that the precedent is great to have somebody who is coming from the private sector, who has no foreign policy experience and who probably has spent his entire career thinking that the interests of exxon are the interests of the united states. having that person as secretary of state i think is very problematic. now, i don't know rex tillerson. he may be the world's most sage and thoughtful person, but i don't think the precedents are promising. >> are you concerned about

russia meddling in our allies elections, in france trying to win power? >> well you know, i don't think the russians need to do that much meddling in france. right now you've got marine lepin leading the pack, far right wing, took major loans from russian banks that basically had to have vladimir putin's approval, and then you've got the next contender after her and he is very, very pro-putin, says he had a great working relationship with putin when fione was prime minister, and generally thinks that europe should be much closer to russia, so why the russians would want to meddle in france, i'm not sure. germany is another matter. chancellor merkel is somebody who does stand up to russia on se certain issues, she's leery of what's going on in terms of russia trying to break down in a tows's solidarity so you may see some interference there but those elections are a ways away.

i think the soonest it could happen would be in august. >> is this a chess game to putin? how is he playing this, and what's the ultimate goal? do you have any idea? >> well putin's not could beifieding in me, betty, but i think you can see several things going on. one is as the intelligence community and the united states said a few months ago, he seems to be discrediting the democratic process, the electoral process, and the united states and elsewhere. putin believes that the democratic process, the way the americans push it, the way they advocate it, the way they advocated in countries like georgia and ukraine, that was all somehow designed by our intelligence agencies to undermine his and russian authority. so in some ways he thinks he's playing payback here. at the same time, when he has somebody like trump as a candidate, he can see the advantages of helping trump along in his campaign, although i think it's also true that the russians were just as surprised

as everybody else when trump was elected president of the united states. >> let me turn now to the cia report shared with members of congress. has there been any reaction to that overseas? >> not much. i mean, we were especially looking for some kind of reaction in russia itself either by opponents of the putin government or by the kremlin itself, but everybody's been very quiet for the moment. we may start to see many more reactions tomorrow. but it's still a little bit inconclusive. the russians don't do these things saying let's have somebody from the kgb or from the fsb as it's called now hack into the republican national committee and the democratic national committee. they subcontract this stuff out, which is why we always see the attribution to groups like cozy bear and fancy bear as organizations close to russian intelligence or russian military intelligence. this is the way that spies work, and even the cia recommendations

as they've been reported by "the washington post" and the "new york times" are recommendations that say they have high confidence that the russians were hacking into the republican national committee as well as the democratic national committee, but didn't release the republican national committee documents because essentially they favored trump. >> i know there hasn't been a whole lot of reaction just yet but how closely is europe watching the russian relationship as it moves from president obama to a trump administration? >> well, i think that people who are looking to nato to defend europe's interests militarily are extremely worried. look, the baltic states that are members of nato that absolutely rely on the idea that an attack on one nato nation is an attack on them all, they don't like to hear president trump or president-elect trump saying that he thinks well, you know, maybe if they don't pay their dues, we're really not going to support them. but it's all conditional on

whetherer that' anteing up the amount he thinks they should anteup and that is going to be taken by the russians especially by vladimir putin as a cart blanche to do almost whatever he wants to do. if you say that putin is not interfering in the ukraine, that he hasn't conducted a covert invasion, that he didn't use hybrid warfare to annex crimea, all of which president-elect trump has said, then you essentially are telling him he's free to do the same kind of thing elsewhere so the countries that are closest to russia are the ones that are most concerned, because they feel that he wants to basically bring them back in to a kind of new quasi-soviet empire. >> chris dickey with a lot of insight for us today. chris, thank you so much for joining us live from paris. a gift from heaven, that's how colombian president juan manuel santos describes his nobel peace prize. other winners received their awards in stockholm, sweden but absent at that ceremony was bob

dyl dylan, this year's winner for literature. he won't be in oslo tomorrow night either for a concert honoring this year's nobel peace prize winner. it will feature several acts including sting and hosted by conan o'brien. still ahead, a separating fact from fiction. what can be done if anything to crack down on fake news? and stay with us next hour, i'll talk to one of the so-called hamilton electors, a group in a may be democrats' last hope of keeping donald trump out of the white house.

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the epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year, it's now clear that so-called fake news can have real world consequences. >> that was hillary clinton earlier this week denouncing fake news and calling on congress to take action. many democrats are blaming fake news for contributing to her

loss. new study finds that fake news stories fooled americans about 75% of the time. that same study found trump supporters were more inclined to believe fake news, versus 58% of clinton supporters. man inspired by a fake conspiracy theory about clinton allegedly opened fire in a washington, d.c., pizzeria. tom costello has that story. >> reporter: under arrest 28-year-old edgar welch accused of firing an assault weapon inside a pizza restaurant. he came to investigate pizzagate. >> let me state the stories are completely and entirely false. >> reporter: the pizza gate conspiracy began with a clinton wikileaks and email stolen from john podesta about a fund-raiser involving the restaurant. users of the anonymous online message board 4chan known for

rogue political discussion suggested without any proof that the word pizza was code for child sex trafficking at the restaurant. the conspiracy theory spread to r reddit and youtube, and officially the thread was banned. police and federal agents say the story is false. the website claimed there was a secret tunnel running up to the store to the politics and prose book store to traffic children but the book store says there is no tunnel. for weeks the restaurant and book store have received dozens of threats each day. >> we don't see this as a left/right thing or democratic/republican thing. this is really truth versus fiction. >> reporter: discredited rumors about sex trafficking shared by president-elect trump's choice for national security adviser general michael flynn who last month retweeted a link writing "must read." michael g. flynn his son chief

of staff had been pushing pizza gate on twitter. another man responded to our request for comment. anxious store owners met with d.c. police commanders as a fake news story has turned into something very real, tom costello, nbc news, washington. >> so disturbing. let's bring in antonio garcia martinez a former employee of facebook and author of "chaos monkeys." thanks for being with us today. americans are not only fooled by fake news but analysis that indicates it outperforms real news. why is there such an appetite for it? >> well i mean the reality is that we like news or pieces of content that reaffirm our world view. there is that he thing called cognitive dissidents. we don't like hearing points of view that go against our own. this is the definition of click bait basically. >> you talk to some people about fake news they'll tell you it's so obviously fake, how could you believe it yet we look at the numbers and a vast majority do. >> sweet sounding fairytales are

better than hard hitting news. on a platform like facebook there's no editorship or policing of the content, this is the end result. >> so let's look at some of the fake news headlines that people thought were accurate. donald trump sends his own plane to transport 200 stranded marines. 84% thought that was accurate. also fbi director put a trump sign on his front lawn, 85% believe that. do these numbers surprise you? >> not at all. i think what surprises me is that facebook hasn't stepped in sooner to control some of the news stories. they have the technology. i headed a team in which you basically filtered nefarious ads which is a similar problem and they could put a stop to this if they want to. it surprises me they haven't >> walk us through how that would work. >> it's simple, it's a hard problem but not unsolvable. they take the input that you give, basically enlist the user base as their editors. you flag a content nefarious or

misleading facebook feeds it into computer models and run on the content being uploaded and flags what is nefarious, bad or fake or whatever. at some point you have human reviewers that use a lot of the software to review it. facebook is good at building software that lets human scale up and police an internet scale content problem. they could do this. the problem isn't really technical. it's more psychological. they view themselves as a technology platform, not as a media publisher and that's really the problem around why they're not doing it. >> very interesting. well a recent gallup survey suggests trust in media is the an all-time low. 32% say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, down 8% from last year and down considerably from the all-time high of 72% back in 1976. so what has contributed to this mistrust in your opinion? >> i think the fact that half of americans are getting the news from facebook which say completely unedited medium. back in the day a newspaper like the "new york times" used to have a front page editor that

using their discernment and judgment and a little bit of political bias would sky what americans viewed. right now mark zuckerberg is the front page editor to every paper in the world. he's is this role now and not effective in a way people are used to. inevitable result of relinquishing role of editorship that really belongs to it. >> you're calling on mark zuckerberg to do more? >> absolutely. they have to embrace this role of a media company. when the stakes are american democracy saying, hey, it's not my job just isn't good enough anymore. >> thank you for joining us today. we appreciate it. >> thank you. overnight, defense secretary ash carter announcing that the u.s. will send an additional 200 troops to help drive isis from syria. when we come back, the latest on the fight to liberate aleppo. why human rights workers warn the situation there could be get worse in the coming weeks. american express open cards can help you take on a new job,

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200 more u.s. troops are

heading to syria. secretary of defense ash carter made that announcement today. special operations soldierless assist local forces in ousting ices from raqqah. the terror group's de facto capital. this comes at the syrian war rages none aleppo. the syrian government saying they've reclaimed most of the besieged city from isis but the humanitarian crisis is worsening. joining me from london, what's the situation on the ground? >> reporter: thanks, betty. russian officials saying 50,000 civilians fled aleppo in the past two days. it's not clear if that number is true but many civilians jumping from the pan into the fire. take a look. syrian largest city is about to fall. government forces say they've retaken more than 90% of aleppo. an ancient now nearly leveled by

years of war. just this week tens of thousands of civilians fled the rebel-held east, to the relative calm of the government-held west. their nightmare isn't over. united nations has reported claims that hundreds of men and boys disappeared once they crossed into west aleppo. human rights workers warn that the harsh treatment of civilians could get worse. >> what is the worry among human rights workers once aleppo falls completely? >> you have a huge number of people who may be exposed to reprisals of different kinds, including being picked up and held in detention centers, interrogated and tortured. >> reporter: diplomats huddling in europe today. they're struggling to save the 100,000 estimated swecivilians trapped in the east. >> happening in syria the worst catastrophe since world war ii itself. it's unacceptable.

it's horrible. >> reporter: so far talking accomplished little. syrian's government and its russian allies are determined to see a full military victory in aleppo. that will come at an even greater human cost. and more on that diplomacy. just today secretary of state john kerry pleading in paris for fundamental human decency to allow civilians to leave east aleppo. now, this is a problem that donald trump will likely inherit when he comes into office next month, and it's one as you mentioned, betty, in which u.s. troops will have an increasingly large role. >> it is a dire situation. nbc's matt bradley in london. thank you. still ahead, much more on that breaking news you saw here first. exxon/mobil ceo rex tillerson said to be donald trump pick for secretary of state. following reaction at the top of the hour. don't go anywhere.

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i'm betty nguyen in world headquarters in new york. starting the hour with breaking news. sources tell nbc news andrea michel president-elect trump has chosenen exxon/mobil ceo rex tillerson to be secretary of state. as we've learned, things can change and we are awaiting official announcement. tillerson spent his entire career at exxon/mobil and previously had interests in russia when boris yeltsin was in power and during that time developed a close relationship with vladimir putin. trump arrived in baltimore for the army/navy game a short time ago. msnbc has more in baltimore. >> reporter: betty, good afternoon. the army/navy clash going on right now. donald trump is going to spend time with both navy and army. that's traditionally what a president would do here. there's a form's ceremony. he's not going to participate in that, but observing some of those formalie