we're going to talk to the former head of the cia and nsa, general michael hayden. ♪ ♪ (bell mnemonic bladder leakage was making me feel like i couldn't spend time with my grandson. now depend fit-flex has their fastest absorbing material inside, so it keeps me dry and protected. go to depend.com - get a coupon and try them for yourself. >>> the defense secretary james mattis saying the u.s. military does not leave troops behind, but not giving any new details on why the body of sergeant la david johnson was not recovered for nearly 48 hours after the attack in niger that left four soldiers dead. i want to bring in now cnn national security analyst general michael hayden, a former director of the cia and the national security agency. good evening, sir. >> good evening. >> what a day. >> yeah. >> as i said, at first i have to ask you about general kelly's speech. we've used the word unprecedented some times in the last two years. what did you make of today? >> i was frankly very impressed with his speech. and don, let me qualify that immediately. i think it was unfortunate the personal

general michael hayden, thank you for walking us through it. chris? >>> an odd extension of a political spat it seems. the president is saying fema and the military won't stay in puerto rico forever. yet doctors are feverishly working to save lives. up next, we have a reality check on hurricane-ravaged puerto rico. three weeks after maria. are we seeing what the president calls a success? >>> san juan's mayor calls president trump the hater in chief after his tweets yesterday vowing that fema and the military won't be in puerto rico forever, which is of course true. why say that now in the midst of crisis? cnn's ed lavandara is on the ground in san juan taking a look at whether or not there is success or crisis. ed, thank you for being there. what is the reality? >> reporter: the reality is this is an incredibly, painfully long road to recovery. we went to the southeast corner of the puerto rican island to visit a town where the eye of the storm of hurricane maria came to shore a little more than three weeks ago. and it is a slow recovery process ther

we're going to talk to the former head of the cia and nsa, general michael hayden. ♪ ♪ you nervous? ♪ ♪ and i'm the founder of ugmonk. before shipstation it was crazy. it's great when you see a hundred orders come in, a hundred orders come in, but then you realize i've got a hundred orders i have to ship out. shipstation streamlined that wh the order data, the weights of , everything is seamlessly put into shipstation, so when we print the shipping ll everything's pretty much done. it's so much easier so now, we're ready, bring on t. shipstation. the number one ch of online sellers. go to shipstation.com/tv and get two months free. to find smarter solutions. to offer more precise and less invasive treatment options than before. like advanced genomic testing and immunotherapy. see how we're fighting to outsmart cancer at cancercenter.com/outsmart >>> the defense secretary james mattis saying the u.s. military does not leave troops behind but not giving any new details on why the body of sergeant la david johnson was not recovered for nearly 48 hours after the attack in niger that lef

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director of national intelligence to the honorable sue gordon along with the honorable john brennan, michael hayden, the honorable judge webster.

let's speak with retired general michael hayden. context matters. i didn't hear this conversation.it. we don't know. the president off talks in glowing terms about the military. at the same time there seems to be a fundamental question whether or not he knows how to do the job. what is your take? >> well, it is a very difficult job, chris. for those who want to criticize the president who haven't yet had to do that, i would say be a little bit kind. now, i have had to do that. there are very few good things you can say to a grieving family. and i'm afraid what the president said is not in the list of good things to say. it betrays i think some inexperience. it may be tray a little bit of the man who has difficulty expressing empathy which we have seen in other circumstances as well. >> what do you make of his decision to defend what he did here by saying other presidents didn't always do the right thing essentially? which is largely untrue, right? >> yeah. actually, i'm more offended by that than i was the president having difficulty finding the right words in a very difficult circ

clint is on our advisory board, along with james clapper and mike morrell and michael hayden and leone got some of the best national security experts in the world basically shouting from the rooftops that we have been invaded and we have to understand this. because if we don't, we're going to have our democracy fray at the edges. >> rob, are you conducting the investigation alongside the mueller investigation and the two house intelligence committee investigations and i guess generally the fbi, are they all complicit together? >> well, no. what we're doing is we're trying to bring together all of the elements. it's wha very confusing situati. you've got, you know, cybersecurity, you've got possible money laundering, you've got three investigations in the congress, and then you've got mueller and the fbi. so we tried to give people an overview. plus the history of what the russians have been doing. chris, you know, we're the same age. we ducked under desks when we were kids. >> i remember. >> we worried about the a ltom bomb. there's no desk to duck under now. we've been invaded and we

and, you know, i mean, intelligence is not -- as michael hayden likes to say if it was a fact, it wouldn't be intelligence. these are not proven things in this dossier. not necessarily completely corroborated. but it's things that credible sources told him that bear further investigation, i think is the way to put it. >> john heilemann, that's the what. but the why when it comes to donald trump is because it makes him lose his mind. i remember the first time i heard of this dossier was sort of in the middle of his first really heated war with the media as president-elect. i think it was in january. i believe buzzfeed put an actual copy of the dossier online and he lost his mind. what does it suggest to you that the dossier has now at least become part of the official congressional investigation and its contents are being run down as to whether or not they are true or not as well as the mueller probe. >> it's really complicated. one of the reasons, it wasn't an investigation. it was a piece of opposition research that was paid for by first we believe a republican opponent of donald trump's

but today i talked to michael hayden, the former head of the cia about this, and he said the one danger here is that even if you have just a little bit of movement on this, you could set off larger tremors he said, for example, what happens if the europeans get worried that the u.s. is going to impose sanctions. and that means they will stop investing in iran and stop doing business there that could cause the iranians to get frustrated and could cause them to pull out of the deal so it's always sensitive stuff when you move anything on this deal. >> and eamon, here's the president of the united states >> my fellow americans, as president of the united states, my highest obligation is to ensure the safety and security of the american people history has shown that the longer we ignore a threat, the more dangerous that threat becomes. for this reason, upon taking office, i have ordered a complete strategic review of our policy toward the rogue regime in iran. that review is now complete. today i'm announcing our strategy along with several major steps we're taking to confront the iranian r

michael hayden the former cia director pushing these kinds of militaristic policies and so these are the channels the democrats watch and their media including the washington post and the new york times has really stepped up the fear mongering and militarism that echo chamber of each other right so it's so you see a total reversal from the bush period the bush era when democrats were staunchly against the iraq war because this was bush's war and now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad go figure now they're like you said you brought up nato there's also been an attack on americans opinion on defending. eastern european countries like lithuania who are and lot you who are members of nato in spite of like you said during the campaign trail trump railing against it. bashing nato back then has obviously reversed course how do you view this posture of the american people yeah this is no this is a great question i mean in two thousand and fourteen victoria nuland assistant secretary of state wife

intelligence, the honorable sue gordon along with the honorable john brennan, the honorable general michael hayden, the honorable porter goss and the honorable jobs what does judge webster. -- judge webster. thank you. [applause] how lucky are we? i think i may be the first moderator in this program's history who has the joy of saying that she worked for everybody that was on the panel. gentleman, i'm going to try to make you proud. this is remarkable. here is what we are going to do, take a little bit of a rock throughboth -- romp their histories and 10 years, and comment on the issues -- 10 years, and comment -- tenures and comment on the issues. >> can you look at us when you address us? >> yes, sir. >> we are getting it back echo. >> i love that. >> what is the greatest threat or issue that consumed your tenure, and what do you say the greatest issue or threat facing the nation today from a security perspective? john, you get to go first. congress is an answer? >> we will get to congress. >> that was a problem because i had to deal with oversight committees, particularly the report that came o

intelligence, the honorable sue gordon along with the honorable john brennan, the honorable general michael hayden, the honorable porter goss and the honorable judge webster. thank you. [applause] how lucky are we? i think i may be the first moderator in this program's history who has the joy of saying that she has the joy of being on this panel. so i'm going to try to make you proud. here's what we are going to do. we will take a walk through their history and perspective from the tenures to see if we can't bounce back and forth. first question for each of you. >> can you look at us when you address us back >> yes sir. [laughter] >> i love that. the first question for each of you what i is the greatest threr issue that consumed your tenure and what do you see the greatest threat or issue facing the nation today from the security perspective? it's one of the challenges that i had when i was the director. it did not highlight just what the cia did for so many years to keep this country safe, so that consumed a lot of my time and i think there was a lot of partisanship that went into that. one of th

intelligence, the honorable sue gordon, along with the honorable john brennan, the honorable and general michael hayden, the honorable porter goss and the honorable judge webster. thank you. [applause] ms. gordon: how lucky are we? i think i may be the first moderator in this program's history who has the joy of saying that she worked for everybody that was on the panel. [laughter] gentlemen, i'm going to try to make you proud. this is remarkable. here is what we are going to do, take a little bit of a romp through their histories and perspectives from their 10 years -- tenures, and comment on the issues of today and then see if we can bounce back and forth. >> can you look at us when you address us? ms. gordon: yes, sir. [laughter] ms. gordon: i love that. >> we are getting it back echo. ms. gordon: i love that. first question for each of you, what was the greatest threat or issue that consumed your tenure, and what do you see is the greatest issue or threat facing the nation today from a security perspective? john, you get to go first. >> congress is an answer? [laughter] ms. gordon: we will get to c

the second part that have segment we have somewhere is former cia chief and general, michael hayden,ked him what is a process like when a commander in chief wants to launch a nuclear weapon. i want to read the quote again from august 2016 from general hayden. quote, the system is designed for speed and decisiveness. it's not designed to debate the decision. soet the president of the united states is now donald trump in a chair where he has very quick and decisive power if he decides he wants to use a nuclear weapon. >> there's this nbc news report. there's all these different stories we're looking at in silos. we're isolating them and trying to see how -- at some point, joe, people have to look at all of this together, including his erratic, unpredictable and some would say extremely concerning behavio behavior. >> and that's why i said what i said this morning. republicans on capitol hill have a leader in the senate foreign affairs committee. and that leader, bob corker, has said that donald trump and his erratic behavior could be leading the united states towards world war iii, cou

this reminds me of what former nsa chief michael hayden once said to me, which was, you know, sometimes successful, you wish it hadn't been successful, like we thought it was a great idea providing arms to some guys in afghanistan, and look how that turned out. so, this has really backfired for the russians, too. so, they're overmatched, but it hasn't worked out well for them either. >> all right, thank you so much. greatly appreciate you dealing here. >>> still ahead, he may not be running for re-election, but bob corker proved he is far from a lame duck senator. we'll talk about the damage donald trump is doing to himself and his agenda by going after the head of the foreign relations committee and one of the most powerful republicans on capitol hill. >>> plus, new reaction from the president this morning after telling his vice president to walk out of yesterday's colts game, and it cost him about $250,000. peter alexander will be live from the white house with his latest reporting. hold on, kids, "morning joe" coming right back. 9 out of 10 couples prefer a different mattress firmnes