to russia was one of the big stories of the decade. three committees are looking at that. we haven t heard you comment on it since the investigations have gone on. i think the uranium sale to russia and the way it was done so underhanded with tremendous apartments of money being passed, i think that s watergate modern age. reporter: say it again, please. what do you want to know about niger and what have you asked the pentagon to tell you and the country about what went wrong? i can t what more do you want to know about nijer. we re going to look at it. i have to say, we are decimating isis in the middle east. they ll go to parts of africa, to other places. when they get there we meet them. it s a dangerous business. i have to say. it s a dangerous business. so what no, i didn t. not specifically. i have generals, that are great
all right. there s the tape from only moments ago. the president getting ready to board marn one heading out to texas for a political fund-raiser. but he spent about 15 minutes answering reporters questions on a wide range of subjects. a wide range of issues. ranging from the unity or some would suggest lack of unity right now among his fellow republicans. he said there s great unity. he strongly defended his condolence call for the fallen u.s. soldier who died in niger. let s bring in jim an could the o costa, senior white house correspondent. you were there with the president i take it on the south lawn as he was answering reporters questions. what jumped out at you? well, first, we should point out as you know from covering the white house for.years, typically these departures for
you know, i respond to all these families, call all these family, whereas not all my predecessors have done that, drawing a compare and contrast it seemed with president obama specifically because the next day he said in a radio interview, you know, i don t know if obama called john kelly when his son was killed in 2010, maybe you should ask him about that. sure enough, reporters asked the white house about that. the white house was happy to feed an answer back and confirmed that obama had not called general kelly. we ve yet to hear from general kelly about this. we were told he was in the room for the four condolence calls to the families of the soldiers killed in niger that took place tuesday. the white house yesterday at the briefing, sarah sanders really was pushing back not on the specifics of the allegations from the florida congresswoman who was in the car with the one family that was upset by the president s comments that the sergeant had known what he signed up for. the family
part of it. we re not, they are. i don t think it s wrong we re in niger. i don t think it s wrong if you talk about the global fight on isis. last point is we are actually achieving a lot in the fight on isis. that s a great point. he s not talking about that. he s hurting his own agenda. which is something that his voters and regular americans would really like to know about. that is a great point. we cannot understate during this administration this week what happened in raqqah is a big deal and the president should be taking a victory lap. yeah. i m not sure why he s not. all right, great conversation. eli, thank you. you two, stick around. coming up, new nbc polling shows a growing leaving of fear surrounding north korea. we re going to go inside the reclusive country. and happening right now, here at nbc, we re monitoring the spirit of liberty event going on in new york city. patrick woke up with back pain.