richard engel, ben rhodes, thank you so much. >>> death and destruction. not in syria but those are words, threatening words from donald trump overnight about the new york attorney -- the district attorney, i should say, alvin bragg. what it means for his mounting legal problems -- the president's legal troubles and the 2024 campaign. you are watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. y'all wayfair's got just what you need for your home. do they have stylish beds at great prices? whoo, this bed is dreamy. you're kelly clarkson? yes. and you're in our bed? yes. what about five star dining sets? sorry i didn't have a reservation. you're kelly clarkson. i love your work. thank you. find just what you need at wayfair! even a personal sauna. oh! can we do the wayfair song? yes you can. wayfair! ♪ wayfair, you've got just what i need ♪ wow. it'd be better if you did it. hey, man. you could save hundreds for safe driving with liberty mutual. they customize your car insurance. so you only pay for what you need! whoo! we gotta go again. only pay for what you need

watching with us is ben rhodes, former congressman david jolly with me.liance. >> it was interesting. i have some experiences with presidents that dance a little bit. my old boss used to do that. you could sense that president biden was a little bit annoyed at the nature of the coverage of xi jinping's visit to russia as a huge event relevant to what the united states is doing in ukraine. now, to step back, it does matter that xi jinping went there. that is a problem and it seeks to china siding with russia and buying more energy from russia. i think it is something to be concerned about. that said, i think president biden has a good case which is look at what we are doing. the collective democracies of the world with what we do to arm ukraine and support them, that is far above any support that china is providing. he is right and the core argument. same time we can't minimize the concern of what china is doing. a sub text of this press conference, both went out of the way to tie just about everything, support of ukraine, whether the common work in develo

avril haines, the head of dni and ben rhodes and others who were involved in the transition to the bidendministration asked me about a number of things for advice. i said, you've got to focus on the semiconductor challenge that we face. so we did all kinds of things that have had a huge amount of impact. it was such a diverse department. you get to be involved in a lot of different things. ♪ david: the end of the obama administration, you came back to chicago and you restarted your family business, psp partners, and you got involved as well in a lot of philanthropy. what are the philanthropic interests you and your husband and your children most care about now? penny: we are very focused on chicago. we think chicago -- it is our home. it is a place we are very committed to, and we have really chosen to focus our philanthropy in two areas. one is investing in under invested communities. so we started, for example, something called the chicago prize. we just awarded our second chicago prize. it is a $10 million grant to a part of the city that has been underinvested in. unfortunately, our

. >> mary mcchord, ben rhodes, thank you both. david jolley, we spent as much time together as biden and trudeau. thank you for staying. thank you for lets us home into your fridays. nicolle returns on friday. "the beat with ari melber" starts today. >> we love getting "nightly news" with lester holt backs appeared we love your work, and the diplomacy. >> indeed. >> have a good weekend, you, too. >>> welcome to "the beat." let me start with something serious. law enforcement sources still us that alvin bragg has received a formal death threat, through a letter that was a littled to him that set, quote, alvin, i'm going to kill you, end quote. it contained a white powder. it's been deemed by authorities as nonhazardous. this is what's happening. we talked about last night why it's not a drill, why these threats don't work historically, but why donald trump, who is under investigation for abusing power, for inciting an insurrection, is now back at the same playbook. he is out online, using his plate form. talking about depth and des

. >> hang on i want to bring in ben rhodes, the former deputy national security advisor with barack obamaealt with vladimir putin. vladimir putin has made every wrong bet in this war, but has the advantage of time on his side, if he can outwait ukraine in terms of manpower and a war of attrition now all this, direct confrontation with the u.s >> i think what vladimir putin's view is the black sea is our sphere of influence, it's our space. to be clear, it was international airspace, international waters the russian view is, stay out of our neighborhood what's happening is a pattern of these close calls. we have seen the russians push the envelope over the years in terms of close calls between our aircraft here they knew it was an unmanned aircraft. they are trying to back us off they are trying to make life more difficult for us. they may be trying to learn something or recover sensitive information from a drone the administration is trying to get ahead of that. the russian narrative will be it is the u.s. that's the agg aggressor. i think putting this out is a message to the world the au

here now to discuss is been, rhodes former deputy national security adviser to present obama. ben eastern ukraine, a region that has become a focal point for this war. where do you see the war in ukraine heading, as we were now well into the second year? >>, well i think you can see what putin's strategy, is to grind this out in a war of attrition, inch by inch, in places like bakhmut, where he's counting on just the fact that russia is a bigger country with more people, more manpower to draw from, to grind down that war of attrition, terrorize a civilian population with indiscriminate bombing, of civilian infrastructure, backfill -- sanctions with this closer economic relationship with china, and believe that he can weigh this out. and even if he doesn't conquer kyiv, like he wanted to do at the beginning of the, war he can hold a considerable ukrainian territory that he's gained and southern ukraine, in particular, since the -- invasion of last year. >> ben, i've got to. ask in 2016, in a rather famous atlantico article on his foreign policy, president obama, you are then boss,

. >> joining me now, ben rhodes, former deputy national security advisor to president obama,and chuck rosenberg. the director laid out in the most clear terms how he views, first of all, the danger of tiktok, owned by a chinese company, and clearly not private. it's a chinese company. the government's ability to gather information on americans. >> that's right. we know the chinese government well enough to say with confidence it's an adversary and collecting information about america and americans and people all over the world is one of its key goals. one of the problems with tiktok, as you know, through its corporate structure, can be controlled by the chinese government. about 135 or so million americans have that app on their phone. social media, tiktok, and privacy are incompatible. if you are on social media, you have given your data to whatever company has created the app. the concern is that 135 million americans have given some control over their private information ultimately to the chinese government. what's the chinese government going to do with it? how do we tailor a solu

into our coverage "washington post" intelligence and national security reporter shane harris, and ben rhodeseputy national security adviser to president obama, he is now an msnbc contributor. shane, these are two very sober intelligence professionals who are just not built to deviate from what the data says. what was this line of questioning about? >> yeah, i mean, senator cotton was essentially trying to get them to say do you think, you know, domestic radicals are more of a threat to americans that are foreign terrorists. they're very careful with the language. if you look at the threat assessment that was released of how they classify racially or ethically motivated extremism, it's clear that it's not saying only domestic actors, it can be foreign ones as well. if you just add up the numbers, if we talk about threats in terms of people who are killed or injured, and i think we would all agree that's a pretty decent metric for this, that yes, that these kinds of ethically and religiously motivated groups are killing more people and are a threat to more americans than isis or al qaeda is, n

lieutenant colonel vinman, a former director for european affairs for the national security council, ben rhodesr and david jolly is still here. you can't say things like caught with your pants down when you are talking about matt gaetz. holding the bag of chinese propaganda. >> it's hilarious. could you almost see the way he lulled him or roped him in and said, hey, you realize you are quoting the propaganda mouthpiece of the chinese communist party? it was well done on his part. matt gaetz didn't recognize what he was walking into. >> why? why is matt gaetz so committed to betraying our alliance with ukraine? >> because he is trying to cater to his political master, which is donald trump. donald trump has a deep animosity against ukraine. he is a fan boy for vladimir putin. on that basis alone, that's sufficient for matt gaetz, lauren boebert and marjorie taylor greene to try to get in with donald trump. they don't understand how this implicated u.s. national security. it's essential for u.s. security. if we don't do enough there, the u.s. gets dragged in. they could care less. >> i say this a