this batch of videos just takes your breath away, ben rhodes. >> yeah. played at the beginning, look, these weren't just a bunch of people who randomly happened to find themselves on the national mall and decided to walk to the capitol. some of these people were armed. some of these people had bear spray. some of these people had clubs. some of these people seemed to know how to undertake flanking maneuvers and i think what's so daejs about this idea of republicans calling it, it's a stunt? a political stunt to have a resolution honoring the people who put down an insurrection? no, this is an ongoing threat. these people are connected to militias. these people are connected to others who stockpile weapons. these people clearly have the motivation to continue to undermine our democracy and perhaps do physical harm to elected officials. this is anything but a political stunt. and the people out there who sympathize with these radicals, with these terrorists, they now can look at those 12 members of congress and see in the united states house of representat

joining our discussion now is ben rhodes, an msnbc political analyst.ion to vladimir putin challenging joe biden to a debate. >> lawrence, it reminds me in 2015, barack obama was getting ready to write his speech on the 50th anniversary of selma and rudy giuliani and other republicans were doing television appearances and comparing putin to obama. saying putin needs a strong leader. and the thing obama told me is it wasn't just authoritarianism, if you look at putin's rule he's demonized the lgbtq community, demonized the muslim minorities there, obviously made good use of disinformation and conspiracy theories. and it was already back then a blending of what was happening in republican politics and kind of the playbook that putin ran. and fast forward five years to today and what you realize is it wasn't just donald trump who was kind of compromised by his affinity for vladimir putin, this is core to some of the republican party. not all of them, but some of them clearly look at vladimir putin and see more to admire and more in common than they have wi

our conversation is our political contributor and importantly former national security adviser ben rhodes from the obama administration. ben, it is quite a menu for overseas challenges, leaving aside north korea tossing up a handful of missiles on a handful of days recently, the reset of the china relationship, reset of the russia relationship into something that american adults would call normal for this era, all of it in your bailiwick and all of it now front and center for joe biden. >> that's right, brian. these press conferences aren't just closely watched here in the united states. they're watched around the world. we've seen in success russia withdraw an ambassador, chinese diplomat kind of trying to dress down our secretary of state, north korea firing these missiles. it's common adversaries early in the administration test new administrations. i think what you will see from joe biden today though is he's not going to take the bait and be deterred from his approach either home or abroad by what's happening overseas. he's going to stay i restored america's alliances. we're going to

ben rhodes, this is a statement from raffensperger's office.ore example of how secretary raffensperger's office was said one-on-one. we would follow the law and count every legal vote and investigate any allegations of fraud and that's exactly what we did and how we arrived at the vote tally. that sounds like someone making clear that their boss did not run afoul of the laws. >> that's right, nicole. you can't help but think that if a member of congress is trying to overturn an election or a mayor or city council member. it would be an open and shut case. you've got tapes and you've got everything on the record in the same way that in newark and i don't know what the 7th visit and michael cohen is about. we know that michael cohen himself was prosecuted for something he did with donald trump and ultimately the question here is, is donald trump going to be somehow above the law because he once served as president because it looks like if it turns in this country, it's hard to argue that donald trump isn't guilty of multiple crimes here. >> the u

been at the beginning of something and it wasn't going to in and out with the more we know from ben rhodes and people like that there was a lot of bad faith involved here. maxine how do you see this because the. ministration is into that it wants to get back into it but we'll have to drop all the sanctions that the trumpet ministration put on the country and politically of doable i mean it just seems to me that is i but in my entire life as an american we've been saying we've been told that iran is an evil awful place and you can never trust them bets well hidden but we've been brought up with obama went out on a limb and i actually congratulate him on that how do we move forward with this go ahead well i think the key difference this weekend with the industry and what the obama administration were doing even though they're the same most people who were under obama are now in office doing this poll is a track with iran is that the approach is very different in that now that by administration wants to take both the nuclear program and iran's missile program and discuss iranian regional beha

. >>> i am joined by our white house correspondent and ben rhodes.t night for 1:15, the back and forth. first, what usually happens, in private perhaps, was played out in public. how unusual was this in your long experience? >> and yours, too. we have all been in the room where he would usually sit and wait for bland, boring statements from the officials as they lay out their set piece opening remarks. this was as opposite as you could get. for one thing there were reporters in the room for much of it. it shows how important each side felt that the symbolism was here, to get out front and be as aggressive and as nationalistic in many respects, as each side could be. and to do that publicly. the chinese are not given to doing a lot of these things before cameras. they are given to be bland and boring in public and don't like being forced to stand up in front of american reporters. they came prepared this time and wanted to have this confrontation publicly. >> and, ben, you have been at those tables behind the closed doors when the cameras are kicked o

president biden's foreign policy challenges and many with ben rhodes at noon eastern.ing international now, u.s. troops may be staying in afghanistan longer than thought. new talks about extending the current may 1st deadline to withdrawal troops. that is the date agreed to and signed. completing the draw down by then is not considered very likely. i want to bring in dan who is posted at the pentagon. every administration seems to have ambitious plans for withdrawal, what are they telling you about the decision? >> this is very difficult. one of the options would keep troops in afghanistan beyond may 1st for possibly six months and the idea is more time for diplomacy and to try to get the peace process moving which is stalled at the moment between the taliban and the afghan government. and of course biden has a history with this issue as vice president under biden he argued very strongly against putting more troops into afghanistan. he lost that argument, and he is facing a really difficult choice again about if they should pull out all together. >> thank you, we appre

. >> okay, ben rhodes, your portfolio is vast as was the subject area in this one-hour, two-minute press conference. you have worked on the border issue, and i'm guessing you found it notable to talk about russia not so much, but north korea and his extended treatise on xi jinping of china. >> yeah, brian. i guess the connective thread between all these things, right? working on the border, it's going to take time, as he said, to deal with those factors in central america that are driving migration to the border. he said a long journey begins with a single step. on north korea what i was struck by, whereas with trump you had foreign policy kind of performance art. north korea sets off a missile, either we slapped sanctions on them or ignored it. and president biden said, this is a chance to have denuclearization. and he did a trade war, a big splashy confrontation between the u.s. and china. at the time trump was doing that, china was overcoming american influence around the world. and biden said, it's not through a trade war, it's not through a tariff i could put in place, it's an infra

joining us now, ben rhodes. ecutive chairman of the serve america movement, and "the washington post" white house correspondent anne geren. ben, let me start with you. tactically, what do you make of the strategy we're seeing from the biden white house, which suggests this president believes he can throw elbows at the republican party in washington and at the state level, and still preserve goodwill among the majority of the country? >> well, alex i think what you see is they have learned from history, from the last decade. we had eight years in the obama administration where we saw the republican party becoming extremist, having no desire to work on anything with the democrats. a republican party that can't even distance itself from donald trump, there's no reason to believe that they're going to be engaging in good faith. joe biden opened the door to working with them on a rescue package. they refused to walk through the door, so he says, okay, i'm moving forward. what i saw in the press conference again and ag

he was chairman of foreign relations he should know better, remember ben rhodes telling generals whate were using these effectively in the past and use this in a way that doesn't put our people in danger but yet takes the enemy off the battlefield and let's talk about that. our base has been rocketed twice over the last few weeks and we answered a few days ago and you're seeing some of that, with a strike into syria one of the malitia but there's a story out today that up until the last second, joe biden had president biden had two sites picked out. he backed off one, when reports had a spotting of a woman and a child in an open courtyard. was that the right move? >> well that was recommended bisect of defense austin. they had the targets and now civilians in the presence of the air strike we're not going to pull the trigger when that's going on. the only time we would pull a trigger under those circumstances where civilians are in danger close, so to speak, if our ground troops were being adversely affected by military forces in the area. then we would have accepted the degree of ris