what is your greatest fear about the reality that the president-elect at this moment doesn t trust the basic facts that a president relies on just to go about his day? what is the most dire potential consequence? my greatest fear, nicole, is that when a kim jong-un and north korea tries to fire a missile or when isis tries to stage a terrorist attack against the united states, we get a warning, we get a little bit of a heads up, but the president and his team don t believe the heads up, don t believe the intelligence, and we let our guard down and then we re hit. and then, honestly, i don t know what will happen. we ll have a major scandal, a major crisis on our hands, and fundamentally the american people won t believe that their government can protect them. and that s the great unraveling that i think we all fear. god, i m going to need a sleeping pill tonight. thank you for staying up with us. kristen welker is back, a surprise i blew who is a former policy adviser to mitt romne
smerconish, always good to see you both. thank you so much. tuesday is the anniversary of 9/11. in today s office politics my conversation with msnbc terrorism analyst evan coleman. i began by asking him about his greatest fear for an attack here on u.s. soil. my greatest fear, honestly, is that an al qaeda affiliate group. a group that we haven t been looking at that closely. aqap is a good example of that. before the underwear bomb plot, no one had heard of al qaeda in yemen. my concern is that you have an al qaeda affiliate group that s not being heavily focused in on. they identify u.s. nationals who they can work with who are under the radar who are home grown, who are esoteric or at the fringes of the jihadi community. those individuals are able to come up with a plot that is simple, is easy to carry out and causes major economic damage. that is exactly what al qaeda is