agreement iran is not an existential threat to israel. now, let me ask you about another existential threat, which is the president s grasp about the nuclear arsenal. you used to be in charge of the nuclear arsenal as energy secretary and its maintenance. this is what the president had to say when asked about our reporting that he had pressed his national security advisers back at the pentagon on july 20th about why we couldn t increase the size of our arsenal in violation of national treaties. i want to have absolutely perfectly maintained, which we are in the process of doing, nuclear force. but when they said, i want ten times what we have right now, it s totally unnecessary, believe me. because i know what we have right now. you want no increase whatsoever, you re happy? we will need an increase, but i want modernization and i want total rehabilitation. it s got to be in tiptop shape. tiptop shape. he already claimed back in
nuclear deal, two of the primary negotiators of the agreement, former secretary of state john kerry and former energy secretary ernest muniz were on capitol hill yesterday meeting with democrats. joining me now is ernest muniz, physicist and co-chair of the nuclear threat initiative. thank you. welcome. good to be back. let me play devil s advocate. why isn t the president right? iran is a bad player around the region, syria, yemen, iraq, the revolutionary guard all these bad behaviors. why pre seserve the nuclear dea and give them access to the european and other businesses? because the deal has rolled back their nuclear program. we don t want to lose that. the deal has given us unpa unparalleled visibility into what they do. transparency unprecedented. the deal has given us a streamlined way to work with our allies as opposed to against our allies to go back to effective
we must maintain deterrence, we agree with that. but we should not go around threatening the use of nuclear weapons. this goes very, very much counter to our own interests. secretary ernest muniz, thank you very much. it s always great to see you. thank you. good to see you. turning now to puerto rico. president trump s new threat to end u.s. aid to the storm-ravaged island, those people being american citizens. it s a u.s. territory. he said, we cannot keep fema, the military and the first responders, who have been amazing under the most difficult circumstances, in pr forever. quote, disaster before hurricanes. this is days before mike pence visited the island and said the administration would stick with puerto rico for as long as the recovery takes. we are with you today. we will be with you today. we will be with you every day until puerto rico rebuilds and
so i m not giving anything away, but i ve been saying this for a long time. and coming up, we need to talk to two key players in the iran deal, ben cardin, the top democrat on the senate foreign relations committee, and former energy secretary ernest muniz who helped seal the deal. and three weeks after hurricane maria ripped through puerto rico. the president said they should not expect fema and the feds to stick around forever. meanwhile, some trapped in remote areas of the island have a message for fema. come on. do what you re supposed to do. we need you. and fema is not a service that is i understand we pay for it. and if we pay for it, we want what we pay back. and we want it now. good day. i m andrea mitchell in