a vtc with general lee and there is a body of intelligence that leads up to this. that was persuasive to secretary esper, myself and many others that the chinese thought wrongly that the united states was going to attack them. i'm guaranteed certain that president trump had no intent to attack and it was my task to make sure i communicated that. and the purpose was to de-escalate. >> you shared all that earlier i understand. did you or did you not ask -- tell him if we were going to attack you would let him know ?oo >> as part of that conversation i said general lee there won't be attack between great portion. if there was there would be calls going back. i'll probably give you a call but we're not going to attack you. truce me. -- trufs me. trust me. i wanted to transmit president trump's intent to insure the american people are protected