but the nsc you understand saw the threat. it wasn't that they missed it. >> that's exactly right.ted in a number of sources, the "new york times" did a long tiktok on the government's reaction to covid and they say in this long article in early january staff at the nsc and elsewhere in the government were raising the red flag about that. the first page of woodward's book talks about how my successor and his deputy were in seeing the president at the end of january. people knew what was going on. the problem was not failure to understand this was a threat. the problem was in the oval office and the president's empty chair. he did not want to deal with this. >> they got things wrong early on even at the task force level but once they figured out they were wrong they wanted to make a shift. it was the president who didn't and now we see that on the tapes. a few more things for you, ambassador, if you would. first, woodward says that mattis, general mattis said that the president is dangerous and unfit. former official coates doesn't know the difference between a truth and a lie he sa

. >> when i was talking about the nsc, the national security council, you said in the book, the nsc saw the threat of covid. i don't want people confused. yeah, the nsc you understand saw the threat. it was not they missed it. >> that's exactly right. it has been reported in a number of sources and "the new york times" did a long tiktok on the government's reaction on dough v covid-19. the first page of woodward's book talks about this. people knew what was going on. the problem was not failure to understand this was a threat. the problem was it is in the oval office. the president's did n did not w deal with it. >> once they figure out they were wrong, they wanted to make a shift. now we see it on the tape. woodward says jongeneral mattis says the president is dangerous unsafe. and coates says, he does not know the difference between the truth or a lie. you said in your own book, and treasury secretary mnuchin, you were all worried. worried about what? >> worry about the way a president conducted foreign affairs in many cases. sbe interfering in prosecutions and investigations in this

mishandled, or if in 2012, a top nsc staffer for obama had come out and said benghazi is a disaster, here is how the administration has gone wrong. you just don't see dramatic turns like this from staffers who are trained to hold things so close to the invevest, who a used to handling classified material, who do not go and leak to the press with frequency and tend to be not press-savvy so it really is a very courageous move on olivia troye's behalf it certainly is not going to help her career within government so shelter is motivated by principles here. >> and she has quite a stellar career, a great resume, she's got a lot of national security experience so this really is a big step look what's happened already to some of the other people during impeachment who ended up having to leave their very good state department and nsc jobs. kimberly, joe biden is really hammering, again, consistently, no matter what other veins he tries to open up, on the presidential response to covid >> yes, because that remains top ofmind for most voters right now. i can't think of an election where there

you could provide higher fidelity, we're working on a couple things right now like a protective the nsc service. that's gonna roll out that's gonna be a game-changer i think. you continue to push er crossed the federal government, another game changer. it will all roll up to consistent unified dashboards you can understand where the risks are, you understand where the problems are across the federal government we can put our focus attention on that. this is been a game-changer. i think we have made a lot of progress though. you mentioned clout the experience in the cloud. we're in the cloud already here. that has allowed us to skip over some of these vpn viability's have been so pervasive over the last year or so. bypassing vpn straight up towards places in the service. those are great things more advancement ahead of us. >> i appreciate the conversation, and i think we are out of time. any closing comments? >> and is want to say thanks for giving me the time of day, being prepared, participating, thank you to tom for doing this. you are always right on top of it, and you adapt and. i k

. >> vindman says he told the nsc's legal counsel and others but says he does not know for sure who filed the whistle-blower complaint. >> i know who i spoke to but do i know that that was the person that then made the complaint? i do not. >> at the time that you were in the hearings did you think that impeachment was appropriate in that case >> my role is not to decide whether the president should be impeached or not i suspect thed that this was an impeachable offense. i suspected it as soon as i heard the call, that if this became public the president would be impeached, no doubt about it. >> the president was acquitted by the senate and the white house has said there was nothing wrong with the phone call. >> i call it a perfect call i always will call it a perfect call and he reported it totally differently. >> the president suggested you are a never trumper. are you a never trumper? >> i could say that i'm now a never trumper. i was not a never trumper before i was non-partisan regardless of what administration i would just try to do the best i could to advance national security inter

joining me now is a former trump nsc official and author of the stakes. michael, i've got a lot of news on this and we will get to that in a moment. have you ever heard donald trump utter one disparaging comment about our troops or our fallen heroes? >> no. and i was with him for the first 14 months of the demonstration on every foreign trip where i had lots of interaction with the military bases overseas and the united states, i never heard him say anything like that. one thing i heard him say which you just mentioned in his opening, i heard him ask really pointed questions to generals and senior officials that they had trouble answering. you know, on more than one location they were taken aback. i think they'd gotten used to getting rubberstamped, they were so unused to answering these kinds of questions that they would get flustered and couldn't think of anything. at one point the president said which i think they thought they were going into a meeting where they would stick something in front of him and he would sign it. he saidysk okay, and he kept t

in joining me now is retired general robert spalding, former senior director at the nsc.ou have the unique perspective of having worked in both of these administrations. you have seen it, which vision is best for america right now? >> if you look at who biden has lined up to bring into his administration, you're essentially going to get a repeat of the obama administration. the challenge with that, biden talks about influence -- what you'rere going to see is a strengthening of chinese influence over our economy which is it bad for our political process. he is right, we have a problem and the only one doing anything about that is president trump. when you think about the taxes that steve forbes talked about, when you talk about the banning of fracking and talk about canceling tariffs on the chinese, what you are doing is you are inviting more infiltration into our society, that's what we tried to stop in the trump administration and it took three years to get all the officials out who really wanted to continue that process. what you're talking about is going back to where

the secretary of state and national security advisor john bolton, john kelly and hr director for the nsc and kim jung-un and his sister and then you said something to mike pompeo. >> we were walking and getting ready to sit down and this is the intense meeting the stakes are high. in my mind i said i will lighten the mood and make a joke to secretary pompeo. he joked back with me a little bit. i said mr. secretary to the only person here who hasn't killed somebody and he said yeah you're the only one. that wasn't the answer i was looking for so we had that exchange with the sit down for the real meeting to take place for things to kick off. >>host: you say you were the first mom who became a white house press secretary. a lot of your book is focused on motherhood and the role of the children in your life and balancing that role to be a wife and a mom and a role at the white house you don't shy away from getting into that. you talk about the epidural with your first child and you go there. but you also tell some stories about the stress you felt about missing things in your kids lives. on

top positions, like director of national intelligence and the senior-most intelligence post on the nsctaff. a former senior intelligence official describes today's state of the cia as one that will, quote, haunt the living bleep out of us for years to come and describes reports out today about the cia cheeld schishield white house from the most harrowing intelligence about russia as, quote, the most chilling f'ing thing i've ever watched. joining us now, senior intelligence security for nbc news and former director of the cia, john brennan. mr. brennan, your take on the reporting yesterday that vladimir putin is most likely directing the disinformation campaign that is front and center in the donald trump campaign smearing joe biden. and the follow-up reporting today from politico confirmed by nine individuals, nine officials that either worked in or work in the cia and intelligence agencies, that they don't tell the president the bad news about russia. >> well, nicole, in 2016, it was vladimir putin who directed and authorized the russian intelligence services to try to interfere in o

aware until later the president was told january 28th by his national security adviser and the top nscuty about problems in china, airborne transmission, the biggest national security crisis of your presidency. the president never conveyed that to the american people he viewed it that way. not in the state of the union address, not since. he never conveyed to the american people that he had been told this is way more deadly than any flu. >> john, there's an old saying in politics that good policy is good politics. which is to say, if you are confronted with something like this, the first order of business is to deal with it and deal with it as effectively as possible. on the assumption if you do that, the political benefit will flow from it. the degree to which he was worried about a panic, and i think dana is exactly right, that the concern was about the economy, but nonetheless, it's the virus that was threatening everything. and his inability to see his way through that and to understand both the policy implications, the public health implications, and, therefore, the politics of it

it was something that we were concerned about at the nsc. our job is to look around the corner and see threats that i see or other folks are seeing. we saw it and conveyed it to the president. he took prompt actions. he banned travel from china within 48 hours of us giving that advice. >> bill: that chinese decision is something that we're going to hear a lot about. what did you make of o'brien's response? >> overall he's a good defender for the president. he should be put out more if you're a trump supporter. he's saying look at the actions, not the words. o'brien himself was on a sunday show just after that meeting saying that things were going to be okay. you can say that you don't want to panic people, but there is something about being honest or truthful with the american people. the problem for critics, there was a lot of evolution of what we knew and what people were saying even at the expert level. what dr. fauci was saying, what dr. birx was saying. what the biden advisers on the medical staff were saying. it was not that everything

if you look at the generals, admirals, the national security advisers, people who worked in nsc, workedn intelligence, there are over a dozen generals, admirals, people who have broken with him. particularly, is the people breaking with him are the people that know him best. who spent a lot of time around him. know him best. and then, they have testified to his lack of character. i still think that doesn't -- that doesn't solve this problem. this particular set of statements, which i think is so far beyond the bounds. but if you look at, it really is a good question. republican. what more do you need? >> listen. one of his most senior advisers said putin is trump's honey trap, right? said explicitly, putin -- the president is in the thrall of vladimir putin. it's amazing what people who served him say. amanda, put this in the context of the race. we're 60 days from the election. i know there's always the outrage of the day, right? and oftentimes, people move on. although, there are things that have been more lasting. is this one lasting? >> if it's evaluated in the context of all the ot

i went through nsc notes, cia reports, i spent hours with bush, all of the people. >> oh, you did?why? >> didn't he come out terribly in those books? >> well, see, what he did -- i mean, the third book was called "state of denial," because he got into denial. >> let me ask you -- >> sure. >> he spent all that time with you -- >> yes. >> and you made him look like a fool. okay, in my opinion. >> no, no. my job is to find the best obtainable -- >> in the end, you'll probably write a lousy book. i respect you as an author. >> i mean, he -- i don't know, i don't know if he's ever read any of your books. i would be be surprised if he had. but had you experienced that with a president before, that essentially, i mean, it's such an old trick, it's such an old thing to try to do to an interviewer to schmooze them, i've been watching you for years, you're doing great, the ratings are crazy, they're great, all that. >> ah, no. and what's so interesting -- look, i knew what i was doing -- i was trying to find out what happened and if you look through the book like on the north korean relation

what we didn't see on video, though, was what happened after president trump fired him from the nsc andentagon. he was then put on a list to be promoted from lieutenant colonel to colonel. and the white house called the pentagon to ask to find ways to not promote him. so his whole career in the military could have continued after he left the white house but because of the pressure that the white house put on the pentagon they kept sending this list forward with alexander vindman's name on it to go from, you know -- to the next grade. and the white house kept calling the pentagon back and saying you've got to find some dirt on this guy because trump doesn't want to have him promoted to colonel. which is why he ended up resigning. >> we should note that -- there's a through line here between what dan diamond was saying about hhs. that's not normally how this goes, right? it's not normally the case that promotions of this sort have calls over from the white house saying no, no, no, not that person. >> no. presidents do not get involved in that level of personnel management at the pentagon.

. >> pelley: there were people who wanted you to resign from the nsc and dangled a fourth star in frontu to get you to do it? >> mcmaster: yes, yeah. >> pelley: and you told them? >> mcmaster: no, thank you, i'm honored, but i intend to retire at the at the end of my, you know, tour of duty, whatever the end of that tour of duty is in the white house. >> pelley: his tour ended with a tweet-the president thanking mcmaster for his service. today, at age 58, the retired general who did not have stars in his eyes is teaching at stanford. his book is long on policy, short on intrigue. mcmaster declined to exploit the fractures of the nation because our divisions, he advises, are the gravest threat to national security. >> mcmaster: we're in an environment where as we're at each other's throats, the world hasn't stopped. these challenges are to our security and our prosperity and our influence in the world, they're growing, i think, more severe while we're preoccupied with our own vitriolic partisan discourse. ( ticking ) so i kept it in. he started believing things that weren't true. i knew

again warnings from president xi himself later in february and additional briefings from, again, the nsc, the cdc, from scientific experts. and what the president chose to do is downplay the scientific evidence and take the necessary precautions that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and instead put political imperatives like keeping the economy open and making sure that his campaign, which was really at this point in time back in the new year going to be run on how he had, you know, rebuilt the economy, in his words. and making sure that the pandemic didn't interfere with that. >> jackie, kenya, hayes, thank you for joining me today. >> thanks, maria. >>> up next, we'll show you what the new poll says about joe biden and latino voters in the swing state of florida. a lot goes through your mind. with fidelity wealth management, your dedicated adviser can give you straightforward advice and tailored recommendations. that's the clarity you get with fidelity wealth management. and tailored recommendations. if your child doesn't 1 iseem themself at times,ed. they may not be hy

the bottom line, though, is that less intelligence has been getting to the nsc about russia specificallyational security adviser is known to be very reluctant to bring up anything russia related around the president because he's just so sensitive about anything. >> so what is the risk here and how concerned should we be, if at all, about the fact that the president is kind of being kept in the dark about whatever intelligence is gained about russia? >> reporter: it's a bit concerning in many ways. obviously it would prevent the president from making fully informed decisions about russia policy, obviously. but on the other side of the coin though, people say well maybe this is actually better because the president advisers around him and people further down might actually be protecting that intelligence from the president who is known to kind of blurt out classified information, for example in meetings with russian officials. so some people say that is a way to protect that but the bigger picture is that if the president is not leading on this issue with the most up to date information ab

your nsc hat, i am wondering if you could walk us through those initial moments. processedent obama that information, what his first questions were and your marching orders. >>. . thanks -- >> thanks. honorime i have had the story from andy, i am reminded at what a pro he is. serviceemarkable bit of he has done over the course of his life. in particular those very difficult days on 9/11 and after. andy, i want to say [indiscernible] i do remember that day quite well. september 11, 2012. oval whereg to the president obama and vice president biden were getting meeting withir -- the joint chiefs. we were getting information developing from benghazi. we were notll that quite sure what prompted the attack on our people in the first instance. to get truthtrying in terms of what was happening, but also start to develop information about motive for the attack and what it might mean for follow-on attacks both in again against other facilities throughout the region. 2012, the 2011 and time all of what was then called the arabmult of spring, we had several -- in damascus, un

if the nsc -- the nsa has one mission and the fbi has another, they are not talking to each other.it happens in private sector, local and state government. if you look at what the chinese were able to do, this was very typical in the omb breach, the typical espionage activity where they are going to take 17 million records of very sensitive information. all of that information was .aken they areind out people interested in spying on, either with classification or you've realm,n to the defense that is a brilliant government espionage activity. we really have to change the way we think about these threats. ?> can i follow up with you what is terrifying to me is that our failed response to the coronavirus pandemic is asked -- has exposed a lot of vulnerabilities to foreign governments that may mean to do us harm and they may figure we don't have the preparedness, we don't have the social cohesion to respond to a massive threat on our infrastructure. if you would just put this in a geopolitical context, what is the imperative to act now? >> i think that is two conversations, one on the

he actually will be the economic consultant to nsc 68, which we read a few years ago -- a few weeks ago. feels like years. a few weeks ago. where he argues that actually to win the cold war, we need a massive defense establishment. so he keeps the same commitment to kind of keynesian economics, but trims it away from its connection to kind of working-class radicalism and retargets it around national security interests. this make sense? so bell has an argument which we talked about earlier, which is that the end of ideology comes about in part because the ideas have run out of steam. the big ideas have gone away. you can make a case that in some ways they just haven't just gone away but actually the history of mccarthyism and the red scare and the cold war confrontation shapes what keynesianism looks like in the united states. it's focused much more around national security than around national expenditure. >> when keyserly mo llykeyserly, does he have a theory that if you spend all this money on defense, some of it would go to the workers and so forth? >> yeah. >> so he's just figured o

putting on your nsc hat, wondering if you could walk us through those initial moments and how president obama process that information. what his first questions were. and your marching orders. >> thanks -- >> thanks. each time i have had the honor to hear that story from andy, i am reminded at what a pro he is. what a remarkable bit of service he has done over the course of his life. but in particular those very difficult days on 9/11 and after. andy, i want to say [indiscernible] i do remember that day quite well. it was september 11, 2012. i am walking to the oval where president obama and vice president biden were getting ready for their weekly meeting with the secretary of defense in the joint chiefs. we were getting information developing from benghazi. you may recall that we were not quite sure what prompted the attack on our people in the first instance. and so we were both trying to get ground truth in terms of what was happening. but also start to develop information about motive for the attack and what it might mean for follow-on attacks both in benghazi but then again as agai

of state, national securitied a visor john bolton, chief of staff john kelly, the director for the nsc at the time and on the north korean side it was kim jong un and his sister who is essentially an enforcer, and then you said something to mike pompeo, oh, as you were sitting down. [laughter] >> guest: so we're walking in and getting ready to sit down, and i think, you know, there's obviously this is an intense meeting. the stakes were high. and in my mind, i was hoping i'll lighten the mood a little bit, kind of a make a joke to secretary pompeo. and he joked back with me. i i think a little bit. and i turned to him and i said, you know, mr. secretary, do you think i'm the only person here who either hasn't killedded somebody or order somebody to be killed, and he kind of looked around the room and said, yeah, you're the only one. that wasn't exactly the answer i was looking for, i was meaning to lighten it up, so we had that kind of exchange, and then sit down for the real meeting to take place and things to really kick off. >> host: so you note in the book and you've said this many

nsc and health officials push for a europe travel ban, but president trump and treasury secretary, steve mnuchin, refuse saying it will hurt the economy. february 6th, the w.h.o. announces the shipping of 250,000 testing kits for covid-19 around the world. the cdc only has 90 to send to a few state health departments. those tests prove faulty, setting the program back. february 10th, trump addresses the virus at a rally in new hampshire. >> by the way, the virus. they're working hard. looks like by april, you know, in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away, i hope that's true. we're doing great in our country. >> february 26th trump again takes on the future of the virus. >> when you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple days is going down to close to zero. >> february 29th, the washington state man became the first american to die of a coronavirus infection. that same day after a month of cdc failures, the fda approves private testing for covid-19. march 6th, trump, donning a campaign hat, visits the cdc in atlanta. >> anybody right now, and yesterday, anybod

. >> there's no question that in the first severamonths of 2020, staff on the nsc and thece ers for diseasehat wai happening in-- the president was determined not to hear any bad news. >> we have done an incredible job. we're going to continue. one day-- it's like a miracle-- it will disappr. >> this unwillingness to thinkou the implications meant there was no strategic planning going on, because that would have meant acknowledging we were facing a severe threat. and he simply did not want to do that. >> empty streets lead to packedr ncy rooms across new york city. paralysis in this typically vibrant city in just a matter of weeks. >> narrator: as the death toll rose... trucks to new york city to hold the people who've perished. . >> narratohe doubled down. >> now the democrats are ,liticizing the coronavir you know that, right? coronavirus. they're politicizing it. >> very roy cohn. very school of dad. very norman vincenpeale. just insist that you're successful. insist that whatou're doing is right. >> now, what do you say to americans who are watching you right now who are scared? >> i sa

the nsc had approved it, then the white house went back for review i think one of the things bolton'sr will say in court is this was far from a good-faith effort on the part of the administration to look for classified material and finally, by the way, i would really trust john bolton more than some, you know, either justice department official or some low-level white house official to know what is a national security matter rather than what they think it is >> so, rick, on this question of classification, help people understand this. i read the book. i mean, and here's what donald trump said i told the ag before i would consider every conversation with me as president highly classified that's not the standard for classification now we know when he's extortsing the president of ukraine, that conversation isn't just classified it's put into a server saved for literally operational intel. they have a very loose and subjective relationship with classification can you talk about that factor >> yes so in the role that bill barr is playing which is the roy cohn role for donald trump, bill b

. >> i think my argue he is streamlining the overall nsc process and his predecessor or his successor has tried to continue the process and i think what we are arguing even the status quo was a cyber core nader and was not sufficient to get the overall inter agency, interdisciplinary oversight that you need of cyber as well as long-term expertise and to go back to the senate confirmed, we want this person to not only have the ear of the president but bsl th single bellybutton tt we as legislators can push to get answers when it comes to congress, as per your earlier question throughout our report we go through all of the major infiltrations attributed to china, russia, north korea, around as well as nonstate actors and lay it out in one that comes to mind is the defense guy, basically from 200s conducting systematic cyber espionage campaigns and compromising computer systems containing personal information from over 100,000 u.s. navy personnel. in addition to opm, i have the letter that i received from opm framed in my basement say my records have been hacked, there's been a lot of at

i think he might argue he is streamlining the overall nsc process and his predecessor -- successor has tried to continue that process. i think we -- what we are arguing is even that status quo with the cyber court later was thepositioned to get overall interagency interdisciplinary oversight you need of cyber, as well as develop long-term expertise. to go back to the senate confirmed for, we want this person to not only have the ear of the president but be a single bellybutton that we as legislators can push to get answers when it comes to congress. as per your earlier question, throughout our report, we go through the major infiltrations attributed to china, north korea, iran, as well as nonstate actors and lay it out. one that comes to mind for me is the defense died from 2006 through 2018. having systematic espionage campaigns, stealing information from over 100,000 u.s. and navy personnel. in addition to opm, i have the letter i received framed somewhere in my basement, saying my records have been hacked. there have been little attempt to ask -- to extract data and compromise the d