reporter: back now to the death of former secretary of state henry kissinger at the age of 100. msnbc nightly news anchor lester holt reports on the life and legacy of the controversial figure who played a major role in american diplomacy for decades. thank you. nice to see you all. reporter: he was brilliant, ambitious, controversial, and one of the most influential secretaries of state in american history. i think we made for the progress. reporter: henry kissinger served richard nixon, gerald ford, and was consulted by presidents of both parties on international issues throughout his life. henry kissinger has been a friend of mine. reporter: nixon made him a national figure, and together, they reimagined u.s. foreign policy. détente with the soviet union, relations with china, shuttle diplomacy in the middle east. kissinger helped to shape nixon s policy in vietnam and negotiated in the end to the war. famously declaring success prematurely just days before
i think the country increasingly knows it is not going to work and they know if you are getting a virus variant from south africa from which nobody is dying, why are we panicking? this is just like the common cold or like the flu. we don t panic every fall when the flu season starts. and i think we have to get over it, move on and recognize that for over a year our elites on a worldwide basis led by people like bill gates and dr. fauci, have followed a strategy which has caused more damage than the virus itself. bill: another topic quickly the vice president did an interview of the wall street journal. one quote that sticks out. when asked about running for reelection in 2024. i will tell you this without any ambiguity, we don t talk about nor have we talked about reelection because we haven t completed our first year and we re in the middle of a pandemic. a lot of people thought it was
friend to bin laden s courier led to that. we go there to pakistan. it seems like it all came down to a single phone call. reporter: absolutely. it really is just this one detail we have, t.j. senior pakistani official confirming that the hunt really began, this episode, the chase, to that compound behind me with one phone call made by one of the kcouriers. what actually happened with that is joined the dots toward the building behind me. that s absolutely vital because after the process began where americans began to crunch numbers pakistanis were handing to them on a regular basis led