osama bin laden became big with the world trade center. this is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, a country. president trump there taking a victory lap this morning with the announcement that the leader of isis is now dead. joining me now is phillip reince, co-host of podcast unretracted and susan del percio, an nbc analyst. what were your takeaways from the president s remarks and what s your reaction to all of these developments? he should have stopped after he read the teleprompter comments and addressed the nation and left it at that. once he started taking questions, it was a complete disaster. i think when he has to prove himself and compare himself to others, it belittles the men and women who put their lives on the line. i think the fact that he said i could not trust the speaker of the house with notifying her is a bad day for america as well as the world is a safer place because of the actions of this
it appeared he did have prompter for that, and a lot of the details that we got came out in the q&a which is four times as long as the official statement. guys. okay. hans nichols, thank you so much from the white house. appreciate that. and president trump in the address discussing the dangers that the u.s. special forces had faced in the mission as they targeted the leader of isis. take a listen. we were flying over very, very dangerous territory. in fact, some of our leaders said it could be the most dangerous time flying in and out, and that is why last night we were so quiet about it. and nbc foreign chief correspondent richard engel joining us from syria, and once again on sunday, you are very familiar with the area there, and give me a sense of how dangerous this mission was. well, there s different parts to the mission. and so one is the arrival,
together again. there could be succession struggles, so it is a remarkably capable and important blow against isis and terrorism, and having said that, there are 15,000 or more fighters still on the ground from isis, and another 10,000 or so who are likely to escape custody in the coming weeks. so isis not over. this is just a remarkably capable blow to defending the american people. the president having said that al baghdadi was under surveillance for quite some time, and this is what the defense secretary mark esper had to say about this today. is the stars started to line up some time ago and in the past week or so, the operational forces which were one of several options available to the president started rehearsing and practicing and doing what they would have to do on the objective. it is not until thursday and then friday, the president chose his option, and gave us the
founder of isis and he was not a terrible man zawahiri killed many men in iraq and then he was killed and the organization was taken over and built into isis and just as al qaeda is a terrorist threat long after the death of bin laden and the problem is that ideologically-driven organizations don t need a charismatic figure to keep going, because they are not a cult of personality, but a cult of ideology. thank you charlie savage and abigail tracy, thank you, both. we will continue the conversation as we head back overseas to discuss this breaking news that happened in idlib province in syria and across the border from turkey. we are joined now from matt bradley in beirut. matt, you have been covering the story over the years of the rise of baghdadi and the reign of terror that he had and the president gave credit to several other nations for the role in
sort of a no man s land under the control of isis. but it is interesting this white house saw fit to notify various allies and nonallies, like russia, but didn t think that they found it necessary to notify the members of congress leaders in congress why is this troubling to you, josh? well, i mean, because there are certain things that should be above politics and even above ongoing impeachment proceedings. and critical national security interests, like isis, despite the fact that the president announced several weeks ago they had been completely defeated and destroyed, these things are normally shared at the highest levels of government so there is some accountability within the government, especially if these raids go wrong or lead to consequences in the region that might not have been foreseen. despite all this, there is bipartisan acknowledgment to the significance of this moment. how big of an impact does this