need to have to deal in good faith with the russians and see if we get mr. whelan home. the president said this morning that brittney griner is in good spirits but what more you could say about how she s doing physically and mentally and emotionally? well, again, i want to be careful that i respect ms. griner s privacy. she was in good spirits on the phone call with her wife cherelle and the president. being able to now come home. i m not going to talk aboutler health. we ll make sure, the first priority right now, is to make sure that she gets the adequate care she needs after being ten months in detention in russia. and under what the president described as intolerable conditions. so we suspect that they ll be a need here for her to have access to proper health care before she s ready and fit to get back home.
the u.s. offered the notorious arms dealer viktor bout as part of a prisoner swap. but russia has not provided any serious counteroffer. do they have any interest in releasing griner? we are working that real hard, erin. i can t speak for russian intentions. we have made a very serious proposal. we continue to be in discussions with russian officials about finding a way to bring her and mr. whelan home. she shouldn t have to spend another day, let alone another birthday, in wrongful defetenti in russia. it s top of mind for the president, top of mind for everybody here on the national security team. we want to get these two americans home. and we re along to continue to have those kinds of discussions with russian officials. we urge them to take us up on the proposal. thank you very much, admiral john kirby with the security council. i want to go now to dan rice, special adviser to the commander in chief of ukraine s armed
and i know you don t have a crystal ball, but we all want both griner and whelan home, so i m wondering, do believe that this negotiation will go on for a period of days before a deal is made or do you see that it is a something even worse, months or even years? if we look to pass cases that it really takes months or years to bring our citizens home from these kind of wrongfully detentions and that hostage situations abroad. if we look at trevor reed who was released just a few months ago, he had been in prison in russia in 2019 and paul whelan is still there since 2018. so that is the normal amount of time that it takes. though there does seem to be a lot of attention on this case, a lot of action and energy behind this case. and hopefully vladimir putin sees how important it is to release them and send them home soon. all right. danielle gilbert, thank you so much.
that s entirely possible. or is it also, too, that moscow have possible smelled blood in the water here, seeing desperate how the biden administration are to get griner and whelan home. maybe they think they can get some more concessions from the biden administration during these negotiations. either way now, though, the biden administration are essentially in the open doing hostage diplomacy, offering up people in their custody in exchange for americans they believe are being held hostage by the russians. that s a significant departure, and one it seems, for now, that the kremlin is still trying to exploit. anderson? nick paton walsh, appreciate it. president trump appears to absolve them from any connection to 9/11. i ll talk to the mother of this man who was killed on 9/11 while trying to save others, the mother of wells crowder, joins us next. started fostering koli i had been giving him kibble. it never looked or felt like real food.
faces. you wrote, dangerous criminals for civilians whose real crime is being caught up in the wrong place, wrong time, international intrigue. that s the way you have to frame it. the president is agreeing to give up someone that law enforcement went to thailand to try to capture and bring back. a 25-year sentence. it s most likely the only way to get griner and whelan home. it s an imbalance that certainly is uncomfortable in any of these swaps we have seen in the past. are they equivalent or made to see equivalent? an arms dealer who traded to al qaeda andtreists over the years hardly qualifies as equivalent. that leaves everybody feeling awkward. the truth of the matter is at this point, american government tends to put a higher priority on its own citizens than it does