leaders see this future, which is something that donald trump started with the abraham accords, and the trump administration, that the saudi piece is the last part of all of this, that israel, the saudis, and the u.s. were hoing could be realized is very much on the table at the u.n. in september. then the gaza war happened. i asked specifically, is it now dead? what did the crown prince in saudi arabia say? and he said, he said that that is still a goal, could still be possible if there is an end it the war and a palestinian state, palestinian rights. andrea mitchell, thank you for all of your reporting. and you can see andrea s full exclusive interview with secretary blinken in the next hour here on msnbc. meantime, pressure points, lawmakers on capitol hill pressing for more answers from the pentagon after revelations of defense secretary austin s cancer diagnosis. you re watching ana cabrera reports. stay right there. re watching aa
possibly secretary austin. this is something they re marking the start of this year as an oversight impeachment year, it is also an election year, so because of this, and all of these political dynamics today will be one to watch. but as ryan said, it is expected that they will successfully report out this resolution and then it will head to the house floor for a vote. julie, i ll let you go, so you can go and see what is happening. barb, the house could vote to hold in contempt hunter biden. that would send this to the department of justice. are there contempt claims legitimate, do you think? would you expect the doj to move forward with charging contempt? so this is really interesting. i think from a political matter, before congress, hunter biden likely is in contempt. that s because he doesn t get to call the shots. if the house wants to have him behind closed doors, he wants to be in public, it is not his call. so i think he could very well be in contempt of congress. now, mak
recalcitrant witness in the history of congress and certainly this is something worth paying attention to. it comes against an impeachment proceeding into the president joe biden. they re using hunter biden as a cudgel to see what they can get in terms of trying to link any wrongdoing that his son had did done, excuse me, to the president when he was vice president, going back to that term. and they still have not been able to link those two things. but i want to make it very clear, they did formalize this impeachment inquiry last month. that suggests the votes are on the republican side, they are there, for anything concerning this matter moving forward, except perhaps remains to be seen whether they will formally authorize impeachment of the president, that would certainly mark an escalation, but at this point, they really have no wiggle room here to move backwards after they use this political capital to pursue this impeachment inquiry, and also a side by side impeachment inquiry
his diagnosis. joining us with more on all this, nbc news white house correspondent monica alba. monica, what more are we learning about the secretary s condition and his ability to serve? reporter: well, ana, we understand from his own doctors who released a statement yesterday, they say his prognosis is excellent. he continues to recover in the hospital, where he is still working and engaged in many of his duties, but it is really unclear when he might return to the pentagon, how long this process will take. but the white house was very clear yesterday in that they only learned about the cancer diagnosis yesterday. this wasn t something, for instance, revealed in the days or weeks after the initial news came back, which was actually in early december, through some routine prostate testing that secretary austin learned abo this. that s what led to the initial procedure and later the hospitalization. again, looking at that time line as we fill in some of the gaps, he had surgeryor
seen as positive in many ways. first the fact that we have china, russia and iran in the top four are very good. people understand the threat landscape we face. the fact the united states came in as two, i see it as a positive. attacks can come from anywhere. irregardless where they come from, we need to protect against these attacks. we should not have blindspots, especially blind spots of something that could be coming from or appear to come from within the united states. the fact that this is listed i see as a good thing. it means our cybersecurity and i.t. folks and election system are getting ready to repel any kind of attack, to detect any attack, no matter where it comes from. we have 30 seconds. when it comes to this issue of disinformation, because that s a part of election interference, are social media companies doing anything to tackle it differently this year compared to elections past?