filled. the implication seems to be the white house can t hire good talent when they ve had good folks, sharp folks and they ll be able to finish this out. but 72 hours may be a little quick to turn this around. it may be but nonetheless, this is who the president wanted for this job. our reporting is that one of his reasons was that it was chaotic. senior republican familiar with harward s thinking tells our john king and i quote, let me read it to you, senator, it was a question of clarity regarding the lines of authority. i wouldn t call it a disagreement as much as questions that could not be resolved to his comfort level. you heard chute shujim sciutto about that. these are serious things. serious statements but the facts will all come out in the days ahead. seems a little early to do the speculation based on hearsay. we ll see how it all comes out and what the actual statements are in the days ahead. it raises questions about what donald trump said today in his first solo p
to say yes? it is interesting, the president clearly thought it was still going to be admiral harward and had selected someone and pushing out general flynn even easier because he had someone in mind. something changed from when the president spoke and last night. thankds so much for being with us. appreciate it. a lot to discuss here. we want to bring in gregory meeks, chair of the congressional black caucus pac. thanks for being with us. thank you. you re headed overseas next week, congress is out of session and you re going overseas to talk to u.s. allies and germany and other places, i imagine one of the things they ll be looking at is this news reporting that admiral harward turned down the job of national security adviser. what kind of message does that send? well, it sends a message of nervousness, our allies are nervous. as i talk to various embassies here in the united states and we have our dialogue, they are have never seen the united states in a position as we are
nothing to do with the chaos surrounding the administration. this on the same day that the president gave a press conference like no other. the man he tapped to replaced the ousted national security adviser says thank you but no thanks. bob harward cited family reasons but a friend told cnn he thought the offer was a blank sandwich but didn t say blank. also this morning we re learning that the fbi is not expected to press charges against national security adviser michael flynn over his controversial phone call with the russian ambassador. want to bring in senior washington correspondent joe johns with all of the latest. joe, the white house no chaos here, that s not why the admiral didn t want the job. that s right. a senior administration official telling cnn and some other news organizations just a little while ago that nothing happened with the issue of bob harward and his deciding not to take the
listen, going in, it was my understanding that a replacement for flynn would want to know if he had a direct line to the president. there are concerns about others in the white house inner circle, steve bannon included, who s making the calls on these kinds of things, and that s a major issue here. beyond that, beyond the lines of communication are clear impressions from people like this that the white house is just having serious problems on these decisions. who s making these decisions. what is the policy, whether you re talking about troops on the ground in syria, one or two-state solution in israel, are you tough on russia or not? you have contradictly messages. until those are resolved it s difficult for people like that, like vice admiral harward to join the team. thank you very much, jim sciutto. to the republican senator james lankford who sits on the house
administration and how it was running. and here s how he answered that question today. i turn on the tv, open the newspaper, and i see stories of chaos. chaos. yet it is the exact opposite. this administration is running like a fine-tuned machine. fine-tuned machine today from the president. you re hearing now from harward. you re obviously, you yourself, have an opinion. do you agree, is this a fine-tuned machine, this white house? yeah, i d say when i call the white house and be able to ask a question, i get connected to somebody, if they don t have that position filled yet they can connect me to the right person to get the answer. they re still hiring a lot of people. it s been a very slow process, dragging their heels in to put cabinet officials in. this very long, historically long process of trying to get cabinet officials nominated has been very painful. that s not the president doing that.