they can't believe in themselves and u work tirelessly to help them be who they were truly meant to be,nd you do it all in the face of some overwhelming challenges, tight budgets, impossible student/counselor ratios. yes, amen. endless demands on your time. you all come in early, you stay late. you reach into your own pockets and see, we got the amen for that. >> amen. >> you stick with students in their darkest moments, when they're most anxious and afraid, and if anyone is dealing with a college senior or junior, you know what this feels like. these men and women show them that those kids matter, that they have something to offer that no matter where they're from or how much money their parents have, no matter what they look like or who they love

or how they worship or what language they speak at home, they have a place in this country, and as i end my time in the white house, i can think of no better message to send to our young people in my last official remarks as first lady, so for all the young people in this room, and those who are watching, know that this country belongs to you, to all of you, from every background and walk of life. if you or your parents are immigrants, know that you are part of a proud american tradition. the infusion of new cultures, talents and ideas, generation after generation, that has made us the greatest country on earth. if your family doesn't have much money, i want you to remember that, in this country, plenty of folks, including me and my

husband, we started out with very little, but with a lot of hard work and a good education anything is possible. even becoming president. that's what the american dream is all about. [ applause ] and if you are a person of faith, know that religious diversity is a great american tradition, too. in fact, that's why people first came to this country, to worship freely, and whether you are muslim, christian, jewish, hindu, sikh, these religions are teaching our young people about justice and compassion and honesty. so i want our young people to

continue to learn and practice those values with pride. you see, our glorious diversity, our diversity as the faiths and colors and creeds, that is not a threat to who we are. it makes us who we are. [ cheers and applause ] so to the young people here and the young people out there, do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don't matter. or like you don't have a place in our american story, because you do and you have a right to be exactly who you are, but i also want to be very clear. this right isn't just handed to you. this right has to be earned every single day. you cannot take your freedoms

for granted. just like generations who have come before you, you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms, and that starts right now, when you're young. right now, you need to be preparing yourself to add your voice to our national conversation. you need to prepare yourself to be informed and engaged as a citizen to serve and to lead, to stand up for our proud american values and to honor them in your daily lives, and that means getting the best education possible. so you can think critically. so you can express yourself clearly. so you can get a good job and support yourself and your family, so you can be a positive force in your communities, and when you encounter obstacles, because i guarantee you, you will, and many of you already have, when you are struggling,

and you start thinking about giving up, i want you to remember something that my husband and i have talked about, since we first started this journey nearly a decade ago. something that has carried us through every moment in this white house, and every moment of our lives, and that is the power of hope, the belief that something better is always possible, if you're willing to work for it and fight for it. it is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country. our hope is that, if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves, then we can be whatever we dream, regardless of the limitations that others may

place on us. the hope that, when people see us for who we truly are, maybe, just maybe they, too, will be inspired to rise to their best possible selves. that is the hope of students like kyra, who fight to discover their gifts and share them with the rld. it's the hope of school counselors like terry and all these folks up here who guide those students every stem of the w step of the way, refusing to give up even on a single young person. shoot it's the hope of folks like my dad, who got up every day, do his job at the city water plant, the hope that one day his kids would go to college, and have opportunities he never dreamed of. that's the kind of hope that every single one of us, politicians, parents, preachers, all of us, need to be providing

for our young people, because that is what moves this country forward every single day. our hope for the future, and the hard work that hope inspires. so that's my final message to young people as first lady. it is simple. [ cheers and applause ] thank you. i want our young people to know that they matter, that they belong. so don't be afraid. you hear me young people? don't be afraid.

be focused. be determined. be hopeful. be empowered. empower yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise. lead by example with hope. never fear. and know that i will be with you rooting for you and working to support you for the rest of my life, and that is true, i know, for every person who is here today, and for educators and advocates all across this nation who get up every day and work their hearts out to lift up our young people. and i am so grateful to all of you for your passion, and your dedication, and all the hard work on behalf of our next generation and i can think of no better way to end my time as first lady than celebrating with all of you. so i want to close today by simply saying thank you.

thank you for everything you do for our kids, and for our country. being your first lady has been the greatest honor of my life, and i hope i've made you proud. [ cheers and applause ] >> with abemotional farewell, tearing up, the first lady giving her final official speech in the east room at the white house speaking to young people saying stay hopeful, get an education, be empowered, our country is built on diversities of colors of creed, it was a powerful message from one of the most extraordinary first ladies in american history, and right now on andrea mitchell reports, a political witchhunt, only hours before being briefed by u.s. spy chiefs, again dismissing theacking investigation as the imvention of his political adversaries in

an interview with the "new york times." at the same time john kerry telling me today the president-elect should be listening closely to his intelligence briefing. >> obviously it is going to be important that the president of the united states going forward has a clear understanding of the degree to which russia is engaged in this activity, and the threat that it poses to the united states of america. hopefully in today's meeting that will be made crystal clear to the president-elect. >> intelligence lessons, minutes from now, donald trump will be schooled by the nation's intelligence chiefs, the same team he has been trashing on twitter. >> i have never seen anything like this in my lifetime. the fact that the president-elect is tweeting on this issue and taking it to the public, this is just unheard of and unprecedented and i think we all have to be concerned about this.

this is not the kind of bickering that ought to be going on in public. >> and grow up on this critical day of his prepresidency, donald trump goes on twitter to slam arnold schwarzenegger's debut at the new "celebrity apprentice" star. even though trump is still the executive producer. here's joe biden's take. >> he said doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory president o. statements and road blocks. thought it would b a smooth transition, not! >> grow up, donald. grow up. time to be an adult. you're president. you got to do something. show us what you have. good day everyone. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. trump tower the leaders of

america's top intelligence agencies and the fbi are arriving to brief a skeptical president-elect, crypt sized by the spy leaders for disparaging their agencies. mr. trump told the "new york times" in a phone interview the attention on russia is all part of a political witch hunt against him. nbc white house correspondent kristen welker is outside trump tower today. kristen thanks very much. this has been extraordinary and any measure. they're going to be arriving. he calls the "new york times" and prebutts their testimony and gone on twitter and called the house leaders of the intelligence committees to investigate nbc for reporting exclusively last night on some of the aspects of that report. i am asking the chairs of the house and senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with nbc prior to me seeing it. so whether he's looking for leakers or not, this is an

interesting way to be starting. >> reporter: it is an extraordinary moment indeed, andrea, and i think what you are seeing is a president-elect who feels as though he can increasingly alone in this fight, making this argument that the as well jeintelligence is f. what you saw yesterday is a united front. the intelligence community, members of congress, republicans and democrats, saying that they do believe the intelligence. they do believe that russia is behind the hacking that we saw during the 2016 race. you heard senator john mccain call it an act of war. president-elect trump clearly infuriated by the fact that there have been leaks in addition to some of what we reported last night on "nightly news" that the hackings involved not only the dnc but also the white house, as well as other agencies, and that they may have gone back all the way to 2008. there were other details that were leaked to other news

outlets including the fact that according to intelligence officials intercepts captured top russian officials celebrating the win of donald trump. the president-elect doesn't like the fact that some say this is casting a cloud over his election victory. the bottom line though, no one is making the case that he did not win this race fair and square. the bottom line is, you have all of these different people calling for a real hard look into what happened and how to prevent it from happening again. so that's the backdrop ahead of this intelligence briefing today, andrea. it is going to be striking high stakes a face-off between the president-elect and the top intelligence officials in the nation. we are told that the intelligence officials are not preparing to go in and to have a contentious encounter. at the same time they are prepared to defend their intelligence, to back up the information they have and they'll get tough if they feel they have to, andrea. >> and what you're seeing now are live pictures from new york.

we believe that that is the trump motorcade. i'm not sure whether that is, that's mike pence. mike pence arriving at trump tower. of course he'll be participating in this, as well kristen welker and kristen, one other quick question as we go on waiting for the spy chief to arrive, although they could come in through another entrance presumably, the trump tweet and some of the attention being focused on build the wall, leaks from the hill that the appropriators are talking to republican transition officials about putting money in the budget for the wall, and then having mexico supposedly repay the u.s. government, but all along there's never been any question that mexico was willing to pay for this now or later, for the last year they've been saying they're not going to pay for this wall physical donald trump wants to build it. >> reporter: that's right.

and this is of course the president-elect's catch phrase, when he was a candidate. who is going to pay for the wall? mexico. mexico is saying we're not going to pay for the wall. i talked to transition officials throughout the night, andrea, who said the bottom line is they're looking into the possibility of having congress pay for jumpstarting the construction of building the wall. the idea being that then mexico would reimburse the united states. it's a point that donald trump himself tweeted about today, underscoring that point, that ultimately mexico will foot the bill for this. they say that's their plan. politically speaking they think they can get some democrats on board with this plan. number of them up for re-election who are in states that care deeply about this issue, but the reality is, if you talk to foreign policy experts and mexican officials they say they're not going to pay for this wall. still it looks a little bit like a campaign backstrak, andrea, even though during the campaign he talked about mexico reimbursing the u.s., his catch

phrase was that mexico is going to pay for the wall, not the u.s. taxpayers and now, based on our latest reporting it looks like they are looking into seriously into having congress foot that first bill, andrea? >> thank you so much, kristen welker. i know you'll be on duty out there, what a day at trump tower. joining mnow is jeremy bash, formerly under leon panetta . thank you very much. we've been talking all morning about the possibility that donald trump could pivot, could show how adept he is at changing the conversation, could say after this briefing i get it, it's unanimous, there is evidence here. now he's prebutting it by calling the "new york times" and saying it's a witch hunt and saying china is worse, china went after the office of personnel management, why aren't we talking about china? it's because of my political enemies talking about russia. >> i think you're right, andrea, it's an opportunity and big moment, probably the first big moment of his presidency, even

though he hasn't been sworn in yet and won't be sworn in for two more weeks but this is sort of the first national security situation, maybe even kripsis where his intelligence leadership the nonpartisan intelligence professionals are coming to him and saying mr. president, we have a situation not only of something that happened by russia but as james clapper said yesterday is ongoing. it continues. it's something that will be a feature of russian efforts to undermine united states political system in 2017, and beyond, and it's something that affects not only the government, but also the private sector, private sector institutions, so here we have the national security establishment coming to the new president saying this is a crisis. these are facts. this is indisputable, and i really, it really is an opportunity for him to say i get it. i hear you. we're going to take this on. we're going to take it seriously, and not to get into a question about whether it undermines his legitimacy which it doesn't, it has nothing to do with the campaign, what happened in the campaign.

he won. he is the 45th president of the united states, and he should use today as an opportunity i think to move on, and also, to praise intelligence professionals who he is going to need and rely on as his own troops to defend the country. >> and they are his information base. i mean he can argue with them and that's in fact a healthy thing, that's what former. s have done, but he needs to meet with them and engage and take their information and he was referring back to the wmd mistakes made 13 years ago and some of the same officials were involved as james clapper acknowledged yesterday. the fact is though this kind of unanimity is rarely seen. >> you rarely see all the agencies coming forward with an assessment where their confidence is so high and the evidence is so indisputable and again, if the new team is

insisting on a level of proof beyond all reasonable doubt such as you'd find in a court of law, why do you have an intelligence community? the intelligence community rarely comes forward with that sort of legal bar and most cases the intelligence is going to be a lot murkier than we even have today, and you need that intelligence to give you at least a factual basis upon which to make decisions, and also i'd point out, andrea, general clapper will be moving on from his position, director brennan will be as well but jim comey the fbi director and admiral rogers the nsa director, two of the folks who will be briefing the team today, they'll still be in their jobs. they will literally be two of the guys who show up on january 21st to provide briefings to the new team and so he's got to listen to them. he's got to think through the implications of dissing them and their teams publicly. i don't think it helps him to undermine them because he's going to need those people and

their professionals going forward to protect the country. >> thanks so much, jeremy bash, and all of this was topic one when i sat down with john kerry today, just a little while ago to talk about this intelligence briefing, russia, and the impact of course of what donald trump has been saying about it. secretary, thank you very much for joining me today. >> pleasure, thank you. >> as you prepare to leave office at the end of the term, russia, and the role of russia's cyber hacking in the u.s., russia has now according to the system at the intelligence and armed services hearings russia has hacked the state department, as we knew, the joint chiefs, obviously the dnc and other targets. it's been going on for years and years. what is your message to vladimir putin for this wholesale attack on the united states? >> well i think president obama sent the message and made it

very, very clear how totally unacceptable and dangerous this kind of behavior is. the president i know personally, because i was there, engaged president putin on this, face to face, and has subsequently taken measures to express the concern of the american people about this kind of activity. now, it also needs to be said that many countries are engaged in this kind of behavior, and it's a constant back and forth. we entered into an agreement with china a year ago where president xi and president obama arrived at a set of norms of understandings of how big countries and important countries should behave with respect to cyber activity, and that's had an impact with respect to china. >> russia, here the president said he says i told him cut it

out. this was an attempt to interfere with the american election process. >> correct. >> and they've done this in europe. they've done this elsewhere. >> done it? they are doing it. >> they are doing it. >> correct. >> so putin now is ignoring these warnings. he doesn't seem to be backed off. >> well i - there a lot of classified imput on this, andrea, which relates to what people are or aren't doing at a current moment so i can't go into that but i think this has had been impact. i think that the united states has sent a very clear message about the unacceptability of this kind of behavior. how we go forward is determined to some degree by choices that the new administration makes, and obviously it is going to be important that the president of the united states going forward has a clear understanding of the degree to which russia is engaged in this activity, and

the threat that it poses to the united states of america. now hopefully in today's meeting, that will be made crystal clear to the president-elect. >> we know it's going to be made crystal clear. james clapper made it very, very clear that he is going to make it clear, but -- >> as long as the president-elect is accepting of the information that is being made available to him. >> what if he doesn't? >> let answer not get into -- >> how damaging already is it? clapper said healthy skepticism about the intelligence community, all the mistakes made, wmd, that's good. disparagement is not. how damaging is disparagement with our allies, our adversaries, and our -- >> it has an impact. >> on our workforce? >> it has an impact obviously on the workforce. these are men and women who dedicate their lives and work unbelievably hard, many of them under very difficult circumstances to try to keep america safe and to provide

information to decision makers so that we can make the right decisions and make them on the basis of as much input as possible. i admire their work. i have grown to respect the extraordiny amount of effort that is put into informin us, so that we can make good decisions. excuse me. and i think it's going to be really important for the incoming president to repair this relationship, to create a relationship in fact, because it is vital for the president to be able to work effectively with the intelligence community. >> when asked about the fact that the president-elect is talking about things like intelligence on twitter in very, you know, disparaging ways, joe biden said "grow up." >> well, i work under a slightly different set of constraints

than the vice president and i still have -- >> let yourself go. >> no, i still have two more weeks. >> let your inner joe biden come out. >> my inner joe biden and my inn innerjohn kerry will come out after the 20th of january. it's just important for me -- >> how inappropriate is it to be talking about nuclear weapons and taiwan, china, all the other issues, big issues that you deal with every day, on twitter in 140 characters often in a very light-hearted or disparaging way? >> the american people have to make that judgment going forward, andrea. i'm not going to get into the back-and-forth on the president-elect right now. you know, i have a trip that i'm making to asia in the next days, and i'm going to england and france, there's a conference. i'm still representing the country. >> i understand. >> i intend to do that with the

same discipline that i've tried to exercise throughout my term. >> but the days are waning. >> they're waning but they're not gone. >> they're not gone but you have a president-elect making announcements on foreign policy and foreign leaders dealing with him. you've g him calling egypt and delaying a u.n. resolution. you've got the special relationship, the prime minister of great britain criticizing your speech on the middle east and the u.n. resolution. that's unheard of. when they helped write that resolution according to my sources, how shocking was that to you? clearly playing up to donald trump. >> again, andrea, you're good at this, and you're very persist t persistent, but we were very pleased that great britain worked extremely hard to pass the u.n. resolution on settlements. >> and they voted for it. >> and they voted for it, and my

hope is that they will have had time now to digest the full text of my speech and understand that i was defending a british position, which is support for the two-state solution, and that i was defending a long held belief by britain, by europe, by all our allies and friends, and particularly by republican and democrat administrations alike that settlements are an obstacle to peace. now that's our position. it was the position of ronald reagan, the position going back through all history, the position that george herbert walker bush, george w. bush, then of bill clinton and jimmy carter and so forth. so i hope that our friends in britain, where we do have a special relationship, will fully

digest the text of my speech and exactly what we're trying to do. >> what would be the impact, if the trump administration reverses the sanctions on russia? >> well, you know, again -- >> just diplomatically looking forward, what signal would that send to vladimir putin? >> well, the sanctions have been put there, andrea, because of specific actions that have been taken with respect to russia's illegal annexation of crimea. >> and the hacking. >> and -- agreed. you're talking with those? >> the more recent sanctions. zbl >> the more recent sanctions that would be very dangerous and damaging message. it would be a complete reversal of the importance that the intelligence community obviously the congress, as you listen to the hearings, just the other day, yesterday, those are all

indications of the great concern that americans have about anybody interfering in our democracy and our electoral process, in a particularly subversive way, and i think that, if there were a move to suddenly lift them, it would be a huge mistake, and a movement in a very damaging direction, because it would invite further activity without some kind of understanding about where we're going. obviously it would depend on the circumstances that surround it, if it happens in conjunction with a very specific set of agreements, and with a very specific enforceable set of steps that would be taken, that's a different question. >> in the time left i want to ask you about syria, with all the work, all your efforts, five

years, so many people dead, displaced millions, the suffering, russia the game changer, a year and some months ago entering with no warning, even 24 hours after meeting personally with president obama, vladimir putin's, you know, planes are flying over syria for the if, time, no warning at all to us. the russian role has been so devastating really in propping up assad at a critical juncture. any regrets? you expressed some heard, overheard on audio to some of the opposition leaders. any regrets we did not arm the rebels sooner when there might have been a better opportunity? >> well again, andrea, i'm going to have a lot of opportunity to be able to sort of look back and digest what choices might have been made. i'm not going to do it now except to say to you -- >> except you argued for it.

>> except to say to you very clearly, that i'm proud of all the efforts that we made to try to lead people to a peaceful resolution, and in fact, the only solution to syria will be a peaceful agreement along the lines of what we laid out in the course of the international syria support group, and the several communiques we issued at the united nations resolution, which we passed 2254. those will be the basis of whatever happens if they get there. now, i believe there's an exhaustion setting in. sometimes timing is everything and these kinds of negotiations, and i believe that there is a possibility over the course of the next year that the parties could come to the table and find a way forward. it will be on a different plane of leverage, different kind of

outcome than some people might have anticipated, but i think there may be possibilities of trying to move forward. we will continue to encourage that. i will encourage it from the outside, not as secretary of state, because there is no military solution to the problem in syria. now, when president putin came in, he came in partly to prop up assad, but also because isil, daesh, was gaining huge ground, the radical extremists were gaining huge ground against assad and assad was in a very fragile position, and so together i think iran and russia decided they had to prop him up and save them from the possibility that extremists might take over the country. i will say to you that was not something that we weren't also concerned about at the time, that there was a gaining foothold of al nusra and daesh in their ability to push towards damascus, push through, and the

regime was on its heels. did putin make an enormous difference in that? yes, together with iran and hezbollah and the entities that basically overwhelmed some of the force available to the opposition. but that doesn't end the war. nothing that he has done is going to obviate the need to get to geneva, wherever it's going to be and are have a real negotiation that involves the political differences between the people assad oppressed, killed and tortured and driven out of their homes and the possibility of a future of syria that is united and hopefully stable and peaceful. that's a hard road to get to still, no matter what putin has done and he's going to need the international community not only to achieve that, but ultimately to figure out how you're going to rebuild this country. there's been absolutely

devastated by this war. >> to be continued. i know we're out of time. is there more public service in your future? >> it's in my blood. it's in my blood. i don't intend to pull back. i'm going to do a lot of different things which i'm sort of thinking about still, but i look forward to continuing very much, i'm committed to these issues. i'm going to continue to speak out on them. >> thank you for your service. >> thank you so much. >> the secretary of state has public service in his blood since he was first lieutenant in vietnam. it's not the last you're going to hear from john kerry. this hour, donald trump will be briefed by the nation's spy chiefs after calling the storm around the russia hacking story a political witch hunt. in an interview with the "new york times" this morning. director of national intelligence james clapper just arrived at trump tower. more next coming up on "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. helps ease fibromyalgia pain.

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he's going to find that you know, it's easy to tweet about reactions to all kinds of issues, but to seriously deal with our national security and deal with the threats to our country is a business that ought to be done in the confines of the oval office. very frankly, if a president is going to be successful, this is no way to start. the president has to work with the intelligence community. president's got to make tough decisions. he cannot make those tough decisions without the very best intelligence that can be provided to him. >> leon panetta, cia and defense secretary. joining me is david ignatius of

"the washington post." that advice clearly not heeded because donald trump called the "new york times" and blasted this russian hacking investigation and the focus of it. the stories that are being written. >> we'll have to see how the end of the day plays out but it does seem clear that on a day when donald trump could reach out to the intelligence community, could turn course, try to mend fences and what james clapper called yesterday the disparagement of the intelligence community. donald trump has doubled down once again. something that he does when he feels cornered. we've seen so often, and by referring in this interview with the "new york times" to the investigation, by our intelligence community as a witch hunt he has put this really on a new level i think of tension and confrontation. >> on a day when he tweets about "celebrity apprentice" ratings were not as good with arnold schwarzenegger as trump's. if he's disparaging his show

it's money out of his pocket. >> at the end he said arnold schwarzenegger voted for hillary. he deserves is. >> and also supported kasich. i think he praised the choice during the campaign of schwarzenegger as his successor and asked the chairs of the house and senate to investigate top secret intelligence shared with nbc "prior to me seeing it" over to the reports on "nightly news" which had some elements of the roar. this is the declassified version that will come out according to nancy pelosi later today, the big eight, the leaders of partisan bipartisan bicameral were briefed this morning. the disparity between trump's response on twitter and the severity of what was described unanimously by the intelligence chiefs yesterday is pretty shocking, frankly, and republicans not just mccain and lindsey graham but others on that panel, i was there

yesterday, are ready to speak out. >> trump doesn't get it. he doesn't understand that the intelligence agencies of the united states have united and made a rare decision to state publicly that an adversary of the united states has been conducting a covert action against us using the most secret tools of intelligence warfare to subvert our political system, to destabilize our country, and the reaction of our president-elect has been essentially to dismiss, to minimize, to criticize the fact finders from the cia. i can't remember anything like this. if trump continues, there's every sign he will. he will set up a confrontation that's going to i think overwhelm his early months in office ads president. it's a strange way to start. >> the other thing that comey did say yesterday is in addition to the hacking, this is an ongoing propaganda war, it involves fake news, it involves

rt, the official television arm which he said is now involved in propaganda. >> it involves our key allies in europe. in a column this morning in "the washington post" i quoted french and german officials who were talking about the same process of hacking by russia to destabilize their elections, which are coming up next year. chancellor merkel in germany has warned of the effect of these russian actions. trump seems to think this is all about him and belittling his victory. it is a worldwide effort by vladimir putin that again, intelligence professionals around the world take very seriously. >> david ignatius, thank you for your wisdom. appreciate that. coming up, biden unplugged. we'll show you next right here on "andrea mitchell reports" what he said to judy woodruff. ♪ the itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout. down came the rain and clogged the gutter system creating

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democrats are dealing with a new reality in how this new president will communicate. the tweets. doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory president o. statements and road blocks. thought it would be a smooth transition, not, in all caps. >> grow up, donald. grow up. time to be an adult. you're president. you got to do something. show us what you have. let's see what happens. it's going to be much clearer what he's for and against and

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right now donald trump is getting his intelligence briefing at trump tower. joining me is bill bratton, former new york city police commissioner and msnbc law enforcement and national security analyst. great to see you, thanks so much. >> nice to be with you. >> we have an unprecedented situation, two hours before they walk in he's telling the "new york times" it's a political witch hunt, after you had unanimous agreement, they didn't even give individual open statements at the hearing yesterday. there was one statement read for all of them. how did the spy chiefs and jim comey deal with this? >> well, what we are seeing i think is the playing out of this whole new world that we're now 17 years into the new century having to deal with the cyber world and it's many manifestations, and we're all going to have to learn a lot more about that world, about the issue in terms of intelligence that is based on a lot of the

cyber world that we're now in, is one that is really churning at the moment, as evidenced by what's going on nationally and internationally at this time. so in some respects the american public, the world public is going into new areas that we all have a lot to learn, as evidenced by all the discussion these last several days by some of the top people in the world that use this world every day. >> but the problem is, if the threat is real, and if russia is the world's best at it, better than china, better than north korea, i'm told, and if the president-elect does not believe the intelligence he's getting, what are the implications for u.s. policy? >> well we're going to have to wait and see certainly, that the president-elect is assembling his team of experts, a combination of some that are there, others that he's bringing

in, that my own experience as police commissioner up until a few months ago that i'd be given large amounts of information that were intended to inform, sometimes it was dispositive, but oftentimes it came down to an individual, myself as commissioner, taking that information and making decisions that were based on information that sometimes really did not allow you to not make a decision based on exact information, that sometimes it was speculative, and in the world that we're dealing with, with cyber in particular, there's so many uncertainties with the information that it truly is a new world. i can understand the dilemma that's under way at this time for the intelligence chiefs, president-elect, having experienced it firsthand as commissioner. i came in, in 2014 the world was changing dramatically, the terrorism picture, the cyber

picture and how to make decisions is different than as recently as 2009 as chief of the los angeles police department and the world is changing so quickly. >> one more thing is that donald trump is still using some of his private security force working with the secret service, and apparently plans to do that going forward. is that a good or a bad idea? >> ultimately those decisions will be made by the secret service which is charged under the administration of the homeland security secretary with security for the president, so there are no hard and fast rules that i'm aware of that there are preferences certainly, but ultimately they're accommodations so i think we'll have to, as it goes forward, see what those accommodations, if any, are but ultimately the secret service is charged with that responsibility as we know and my experience with them is they worked very, very hard to fulfill their responsibilities. >> how big a burden on new york and the nypd is the trump

protection? >> i think that any city that experiences a president, it is a significant burden and obligation. fortunately if there's a city that can accommodate it, that would be new york city. we have so much firsthand experience with the united nations and all of its issues and the many visits by any president here. going forward into the new year, it really will be dependent upon how much time the then president decides to spend here in the city. certainly his family is planning to stay in the near term as his wife and son, and other members of the family, so we'll just have to wait and see but the good news is both for the president, for the public, is that there's no police department in america that is as capable and has the competence and the resources to deal with this issue going forward. >> police commissioner former police commissioner bill bratton, thank you so much, bill and much more ahead. we'll be right back. hey, need fast heartburn relief?

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that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." remember, follow the show online on facebook and twitte twitter @mitchellreports. craig melvin is up next here on msnbc. >> andrea good to see you. don't go too far. good afternoon. let's get right to it. you are looking at live pictures right now, this is a live look on the house floor, i believe we have it, vice president joe biden leading a joint session of congress for the f