To give him a pep talk, to have conversations with him about how he might be more respectful to the president. And thats according to a white house official, and other sources have said the same. You know, he didnt deny calling the president a moron. He essentially gave a series of different Policy Issues in which hes saying the president has been successful on, he really backed the president , he supports the president. He also said he doesnt intend to go anywhere, that hes just getting started. It was very much, as our own chuck todd tweeted earlier, it very much seemed like a statement that was serving an audience of one, and that is the president. I think the question all of us has now is what happens to Rex Tillerson . Is this enough for the president . And kristen, we know that President Trump was paying attention to this because we can read his twitter and hes been talking about this. Very clear that the Vice President wasnt among those who specifically talked him out of resigni
the mix for the president, at least, and some of his team, a year ago. and we know that the president has, according to officials, seen a video that erik prince has made and his interest in this is piqued again. what do we know might be supporting this inside the white house? that s a very interesting question, because we don t exactly know who, because steve bannon, the president s former strategist, he had supported this plan, and he s no longer in the white house. jared kushner was interested in the plan, if not supportive. and now, you know, you have the secretary of defense who is against it. officials tell us the secretary of state is against it. and it s not just clear where the support would come from within the white house except for maybe the president. he is the decider, isn t he? exactly. carol, you can see her reporting on nbc.com. joining me is erik prince, founder of blackwater, a firm
since president trump reluctantly agreed to send more troops to afghanistan. but now according to nbc s exclusive reporting, the president is so frustrated by the lack of progress in that war, his military advisers are worried he may decide to withdraw u.s. troops from the conflict, or agree to a plan by the founder of a private security operation to privatize the war. this after a week of some of the worst suicide bombings in the long war, america s longest war. joining me now, nbc national political reporter carol lee who is reporting on the president s growing frustration with the pentagon s afghanistan policy. what is the president saying to his advisers about afghanistan? well, what we ve learned is that almost a year to the day, the year anniversary is on tuesday of his announcement of this strategy, that as you noted, he did not want to embrace, but he was convinced to do so by a number of his military and national security
bureau chief phil rucker, david ignatius, gardner harris, who was just on the plane with rex tillerson coming back early this morning from africa and on that whole seven-day trip, and nbc national political reporter carol lee. phil, let s go first to you. you and your team broke the story. the surprising announcement today that despite all their tensions for more than a year, that rex tillerson was fired on twitter. yeah. well, andrea, it s interesting, there seems to be some conflicting information, because the white house is telling us that chief of staff john kelly actually called tillerson overnight in the wee hours saturday in africa, woke him up from his sleep to tell him that, you know, his job was in jeopardy, he ought to get back to washington right away. we are still trying to sort out exactly what that conversation was about but tillerson, if he didn t know until this morning he was going to be fired
have that sort of imperial ceo attitude of listen, i m the secretary of state and i m in charge. everybody in this town knows that that s not really the way the town works. you have various power centers that you have to manage and he never really understood that. well, nothing could have made that more clear than his comment about the moron which was done in the pentagon at the tank. carol lee is here. that was your original reporting. you were the lead reporter on that. we all then were contributing. but from your perspective, can you recall a secretary of state ever publicly, because that is public, there were a number of people present, a number of witnesses, we had a number of sources there, calling the boss, the commander in chief, a moron after such a significant meeting? no. and particularly in front of a number of his colleagues and obviously, we spoke to several people who overheard tillerson call the president a moron. i think that it s exactly that,