northern syria just a couple of weeks ago. this was a very violent step by isis sleeper cells trying to free hundreds of their comrades who were caught behind bars. u.s. forces were actually involved in putting down that prison revolt. and if it s true that he was directly responsible for that, that shows you that he was still very involved in the command and control of isis, very involved in its daily operations, right up until literally days before his death. so this will be a setback, craig. we will expect isis to name a new leader sometime soon, though. raf sanchez in london, thank you. i want to turn to communications director kate bettingfield. we invited you to talk about the president s cancer initiative. i want to start with syria for just a few moments now.
a victory somewhat. what i fear most moving forward is a bloody conflict in the donbas. what we re seeing right now in addition to the russian troops or the mercenaries, they are the worst of the worst and they re moving thousands of them in to the donbas. that s where you ll see the action tank place and the russians retreating out of kyiv. martha: he said that was the original objective, to liberate that area. suddenly they were attacking on all sides. it s interesting to see what the reaction to putin over time. they re not bringing home the dead soldiers because of the reaction they ll get at home. thanks, congressman mccaul. good to have you here. thanks for having me. we ve received this update from the pentagon. at the same time, we have the white house briefing going on. jacqui heinrich was there pressing kate bettingfield on
paid millions of dollars by this company. this is the same company that was getting together with putin, with xi and creating this geo political energy marriage between two of america s greatest adversaries that deal fell apart because of one of hunter s business partners, patrick ho was arrested at j.f.k. over a separate bribery scandal to do with the united nations. of course, chairman yi disappeared in china, the deal fell apart. in fact, china had to pay russia $200 million in compensation. martha: extraordinary. you ve done so much reporting on this. great to have you with us. now everybody is trying to catch up to you and where you are on this. chuck grassley as well as ron johnson. thank you. with that we ll go to the white house where kate bettingfield is at the podium and q&a is happening there or big topics.
that happen. john: that s been somewhat of a question, we put that to john kirby, of course we want it to win but then kate bettingfield was asked about it, and jack keane thinks the president is worried about putin getting really upset if he loses. but let me come back to this idea of borders and what a negotiated settlement could be because of foreign policy. russia is entrenched in donbas, donetsk and luhansk, crimea, not leaving there. how does zelenskyy say we are not going to change the border but have a peace settlement here. i pressed him on that a couple times, i think he s saving things for the negotiating table but he is clearly willing to try to stop the attack. he believes that they are winning, he says russia is losing, but the fear is that russia will try to dig in and
elements on capitol hill. a lot of congressional delegations want to go to ukraine. that is in itself a logistical challenge. that i have a two-week recess coming up. a lot of them gathering to try to go over there. there were some in to poland. they want to go into lviv and meet with ukraine officials. that s a heavy lift for folks and security and everything else. i think there s a criticism here about how the white house is handling this. today the president with his call with zelensky offering $500 million more in aid, direct aid. but there s a sense of what marek was talking about with making a stand or not. we re doing more directly to help ukraine. you saw push-back from kate bettingfield at the white house saying we re doing all that we can. that s really the question up on capitol hill. are we? martha: that was an