andrea mitchell is on assignment traveling with secretary blinken. right now, countdown to the caucuses. just one week today as the republican candidates for president make their final push in iowa. meanwhile, president biden is on the trail in south carolina where he ll be speaking at mother emanuel church, the scene of the horrific hate crime in 2015. his message today, the hate that fueled the killing of nine worshippers still rages. at the pentagon, demand for answers grows after lloyd austin failed to tell the white house for days that he had been admitted to the icu. and a critical piece of the alaskan airlines flight has been found as it blasted off the plane mid flight, taking passengers belongings with it. we begin this very busy hour with the race for the white house. we are now just seven days away from the very first primary contest of this high stakes election year. the republican iowa caucuses. while there is still time, so far, it s shaping up to be a 2020
By his thinking, why deprive good friday visitors of a good visit to an iconic irish pub. Submit ted without judgment. That is our program for a friday nig night. Whatever your persuasion, we wish you a good weekend. Good night from our headquarters here in new york. Hi, everyone. Its 4 00 in new york. Icing is in and public criticism of russia is still very much out. Nbc news with extraordinary reporting about Donald Trumps quote, president Donald Trumps National Security advisor spent months trying to convince him to sign off on a plan to supply new u. S. Weapons to ukraine to aid in the countrys fight against russianbacked separatists. When the president finally authorized the major policy shift, he told his aides not to publicly tell his decision because doing so might agitate russian president Vladimir Putin. Quote, he doesnt want to bring it up, one white house official tells nbc news. It is not something he wants to talk about, this source says. This new reporting helps fill in
secretary. according to administration officials that we ve been speaking to, right now, the president isn t even considering letting him go or replacing him. he wants to see him make a full recovery and then return to the pentagon whenever that is possible. so this isn t something right now where at least with the details that have come out at this point, where they are considering making any changes from a personnel perspective, but the white house is speaking out today saying certainly it will be up to the pentagon to review everything that happened here. do a little bit of a review in terms of what is known as what could have been done better. identify mistakes that were clearly made. so they are saying here by looking in the rear view, they clearly wish something would have happened on a different timeline but they re not saying anything right now amounts to trying to take into consideration whether the secretary should still have his critical job but remember, jose, last week, th
is the same as it always is when we re in these chaotic situations. it s not so much about trump. it s what do other republicans do and say about this? people who can actually have some influence. trump will never change. but you know, the grownups in the republican party if there are any left really, really need to step up because things can always get worse tomorrow. well, let s talk to a republican now. and a grownup. so scott, you re pretty straight with me on this show. are you concerned about the direction that this president is where he is at this point? yeah, i am. i think it s been a pretty rough period since the midterm. he s got a lot of balls in the air right now, and not just from a policy perspective but from a personnel perspective, and he s got a lot of worried allies out there. i think on the shutdown front he was presented a plan by the congressional leadership whereby the government would be funded and they would spend the month of january all locked together f
is shameful. and none of these people who are working in the white house are hostages. in fact, we re the hostages and they re complicit with the hostage takers when we look at the assaults on these vital institutions and their work to degrade the office of president of the united states. it s just really a tragedy that we have tens of thousands of kids look at the president of the united states and they see a joke. you can t watch the evening news with your children because any different moment the newest porn star will be on explaining the relationship. and from a personnel perspective, we ve never quite seen the assemblage of crooks, just outright weirdos, wife beaters, complete and total incompetence that s been assembled. if you took the ten greatest hr managers in the world and put them together and said we want to form a 1927 yankees of