Trump gives impromptu news conference at White House briefing room — full video

[0:00] countries that are their neighbors but it's a failing country it's got 301 inflation it's got [0:09] problems like you don't want to even think about they're not paying their military they're not [0:13] paying their guard their navy is gone their air force is gone they have 158 ships they're under [0:18] water they have 268 planes that were scattered all over the runways of iran so their military [0:26] is essentially gone their manufacturing capability is reduced to about they can still make some [0:33] limited numbers of missiles and drones but it's basically about 85 percent gone and they're talking [0:40] to us and they're talking very politely then we'll see what happens but there's a good chance that [0:45] that could get uh ended so at the conclusion of the military engagement the american people and the [0:55] people of the world will be far safer and more secure than they've been in many many years because [1:01] iran was killing many people you know that war was started in 1979 we didn't start the war they did [1:08] even if you go back to the ss cold that was there that was their situation and a lot of people were [1:14] killed a lot of american people were killed a lot of people throughout the world were killed and if [1:19] you go back just over the last seven or eight months 75 000 at a minimum protesters have been [1:25] killed so it's a nasty place but uh we think that it's in pretty good shape we'll see what happens [1:34] i don't guarantee anything but if we do have to go back in we are locked and loaded and ready to go [1:41] with that being said i was having a little fun and i said how about dana white being the press secretary [1:46] you know press secretary he's a great guy he's done an unbelievable job most successful uh you know we [1:56] talk don king who's a friend of mine i got a lot of friends but you talk about fight promoters this [2:00] is more than a fight promoter this is a man that's uh done the most incredible job anybody's ever seen [2:07] ufc it's like broadcasting the nfl the numbers and what he's been able to do and he's done a lot of [2:15] press and i said you know what i want to elevate you i'm going to bring you into the press room and [2:20] data white could be our press secretary if you would only take the job there would never have been even [2:25] caroline would admit that data is really very unique the only problem is he'll talk for a little [2:31] while and then he's going to beat the hell out of you so and i don't know if daniel would like that [2:35] i don't think daniel wants to take him on but he uh he's built an amazing an amazing machine he's got a [2:43] big fight this weekend at madison square garden with the two greatest women fighters of all time as [2:51] far as i'm concerned yeah women's fighting it's not a nice thing but they are they are very tough [2:58] when i say no no men in women's sports that's great i would not want to fight however i would [3:03] not how would i do against one of them would i do well i don't think so this would uh this would not [3:11] be a good occurrence anyway but i thought i'd bring day in here because he loves the idea and i love the [3:17] idea the only thing is we have other things we have to think about but he's a unique a unique person [3:24] and he was seeing me anyway unrelated and i thought maybe he would say a few words and i think he'd [3:31] probably like the job he loves the country and he would do a hell of a job so uh you were here he was [3:37] here and dana please say a few words dana white thank you i've always wanted to do this who has the [3:45] first question i have zero political aspirations uh i was in a fight for zufa boxing in london when [3:53] he called me and told me that he had done this in the last 24 hours of my life has been insane [4:00] but yeah good to see you yes ma'am i have a question of ufc cage match between president trump [4:07] and former president joe biden same age same weight and considering like styles make fights could [4:13] you give us an analysis of the toughest most resilient human being that i've ever met in my entire [4:18] life many times during you know the last eight ten years whatever it's been i have told him why do [4:25] you keep doing this why are you doing this when he was going through everything that he went through [4:30] and i mean as tough and as real as resilient as i thought he was after uh he got shot i uh yeah [4:38] he is a one of one unique human being and uh yeah would it be a knockout victory for president trump [4:46] it would be it would it would be very bad yeah i think it would be very bad i can't believe you [4:51] actually have questions for me yes the president has said he might consider a pardon for pete rose [4:58] what is your advice to the president about that part i don't advise the president on anything ever [5:03] um but yeah i think it's fair i think it's fair to pardon pete rose yeah i would do that by the way but [5:09] why does he need a pardon he does he was not really convicted of a criminal tax charges sir oh he did yes [5:14] sir i'd give pete rose a pardon all right let's make it happen i think pete rose was very mistreated [5:19] he was you know uh 4 200 and some odd hits way ahead of anybody else a record can never be broken [5:28] and he was caught gambling now it's legal right but he was gambling on his own team then he wasn't [5:34] gambling against that's different he was gambling he shouldn't have done it but he went through 40 years [5:39] of hell and they never and they should have given him a part and they should have given him into the [5:44] baseball hall of fame a long time ago and i spoke to the commission about it and he agreed to do it [5:50] and then he waited though and pete rose died so it didn't help him too much but uh i would give pete [5:57] rose a pardon i would do that just to confirm did you tell the president no to the press secretary job [6:05] i don't tell the president no to anything i no i didn't say no i literally everybody every media [6:11] outlet was calling me and i didn't want to be disrespectful and say anything until he [6:15] he uh he said something first so we were having a very bad press day and i said i don't know why [6:22] i thought of his name he's been my friend for a long time i said you know i think i'm going to get [6:27] dana white to be my new press secretary they sent it to a group of [6:31] the press and that was it i'm sort of kidding and then they wrote the stories though i wasn't [6:37] kidding and you were inundated and i was inundated and he was here anyway with we thought to have a [6:43] little fun and we brought dana here he would be fantastic go ahead first of all were you surprised [6:52] by the results of the midterms last tuesday and mr president you on the campaign trail you [6:58] have said that you have stopped iran from having a nuclear weapon why not just declare an end to the [7:06] conflict and be done with it because we have some great allies there and we have to make sure they're [7:12] not hurt and they would be hurt uh they are right now a lot safer than they were six months ago because [7:21] iran's been very much decapitated but they're still the bully of the middle east a little bit [7:26] and i see that and we want to make sure they're okay we want to make sure it's a long-term solution [7:31] not just the short term they'll never have a nuclear weapon but we have to make sure that's a long term [7:36] so it's ending quickly but uh we want to take care of people that have been very good to us over the [7:42] years [7:47] you told 60 minutes that you felt that your deportation policy may have gone too far but then you named the [7:54] architect of that policy stephen miller to be your chief of staff have you told him that you want [7:59] changes to the deportation policy no we have a very strong deportation policy there's no amnesty no [8:06] no anything we keep that but uh we focus on the worst of the worst we want to get the murderers out [8:13] we've gotten most of them out we've gotten most of the really bad you know they they allowed joe biden [8:19] allowed 100 well uh 25 million people to come in of that 11 888 murderers most of whom committed more [8:28] than one murder we've gotten most of them we want to get the worst of the worst and then we'll see [8:33] what happens but they came in illegally many of them have good jobs now they're productive some of [8:40] them are even paying taxes and we're seeing what's going to happen there won't be amnesty somebody [8:45] suggested will there be amnesty no but they came in they knew the law and we're working with a lot [8:51] of different groups to see whether or not but my policy hasn't changed what we are doing is absolutely [8:57] the worst of the worst we're getting the murderers they allowed people to come in from prisons they [9:02] emptied their prisons into our country many countries and they emptied our prisons into our country [9:08] the drug dealers that we have the people from the mental institutions mental institutions all [9:14] over the world were emptied out prisons all over the world the congo were in the congo their prison [9:22] population was emptied into our country uh all over south america all over asia they did that too [9:31] what biden did to this country should never ever be forgotten and i hope the democrats will not try and [9:38] allow that to happen again we've seen the stock market really take you know up and down like a roller coaster [9:46] the last couple of days days today up last week it tanked uh not last week right after the election [9:52] it went down three trillion dollars that was because of the result of the election because [9:58] the stock market does not want to see democrats and your 401ks have gone way down [10:04] because of the ridiculous result it's not even a result it's almost hard to believe now i wasn't [10:11] on the ballot i shouldn't take anything personally but i will tell you i thought it was ridiculous but [10:16] the stock market went way down right after that event today it's way up because i think they feel we [10:24] have things under control mr president thank you sir thank you sir when were you uh first informed [10:30] that there was an issue with jensen playing in the affair and what was presented to you at the time [10:34] what was the concern um i would say that when i heard about it first of all i was amazed because [10:42] i view him as a very high quality person i've known him a long time uh it's actually the largest [10:48] i think by value it's probably the largest or one of the largest companies in the world he did that [10:53] with a chip you know when you think about it he's got a chip that's 10 years advanced can't be cut [10:58] because of the complexity can't even the blackwell can't even be copied he's an amazing guy i just [11:05] hope it's uh i hope there's no problem if there is a problem we'll let you know about it but i hope [11:10] there's no problem i believe he's suffering greatly i read his statement and i believe he's suffering greatly [11:17] more so because of his family his wife who he loves and his family but he is definitely suffering and i [11:24] i hope just to follow up on the when were you first told of these potential issues with mr [11:31] playing you didn't answer that question well i've been hearing about it and i've been reading a little [11:34] bit about it over a period of time but uh not too long ago and we'll look into it i know the fbi is [11:42] looking into it in terms of something else and i think that he'll be in good shape [11:47] mr president you say the war with iran will be ending fairly soon but you've made this claim [11:54] dozens of times over the past eight months why should americans think this time is any different [11:58] they won't have a nuclear weapon and they won't have a nuclear weapon well we knocked them out a year ago [12:05] that was i said i was going to do that and i kept my word on that now what we're doing is we're [12:11] uh it's really status quo territory we're keeping it going we have the greatest military blockade ever [12:19] we have the new iron gate iron gate is land so by land and by sea and we will uh take care of business [12:27] look iran i hope we're going to be able to make a deal with them but nothing's going to happen and if [12:34] we have to we'll take very serious we are so loaded we just have another aircraft carrier it's all loaded up [12:41] to the gills with brand new beautiful stuff we're making more military equipment and munitions right [12:47] now than at any time in the history of our country we've built and are building more plants our our [12:53] defense companies are building more plants than ever at any time in the history of our country and [13:00] many of those plants are open some opened and some are opening soon we're building new patriots we're [13:06] building new tomahawks new thad systems and we have more under construction now than at any time [13:13] ever and uh and we're taking it and obviously we're taking it for ourselves first uh what happened is [13:19] and wasn't so much iran joe biden gave 350 billion dollars worth of free equipment to ukraine now that [13:31] was unbelievable now they pay and we give it to the european union we have a very good relationship [13:37] we took them from two percent to five percent is what they're paying now which is pretty amazing [13:43] as you well know the takeout would be getting would be beginning right now under normal [13:48] circumstances but these are not president trump is in the white house briefing room taking questions [13:52] from reporters let's stick with the president we just had just in case we had another aircraft carrier [13:57] we have many uh sailing over and just arriving in the middle east so we have three and they're all [14:05] locked and loaded and hopefully we don't have to use them are you going to bring up the case of [14:14] jensen wong with president xi when you visit with him next week no i don't think so i mean maybe [14:18] i'm sure president she will ask me about it i just know jensen very well i just think he's a very [14:25] honorable man i mean he's a great built a great company american company and i think he's a very [14:31] honorable guy and i feel very confident that he'll be in good shape when you went to china earlier this [14:40] year in may did you know about these alleged ties with the chinese fight then or no i didn't hear [14:46] about it then but a lot of people have heard about it and jensen totally denies that he had [14:52] i asked him today because i did speak to him today just to see if he's feeling all right how you [14:56] doing and i asked him about that and he he said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question [15:04] was a spy i asked him that question did you have any idea that she was a spy said i had no idea that [15:10] she was a spy and i really believe him yeah i just think that ukraine and russia are tired of fighting [15:22] they're tired of seeing dead young soldiers mostly soldiers most of the people are soldiers think of [15:28] it they're losing 25 000 denny can you imagine 25 000 that's like a stadium madison square garden [15:34] you have your fights 25 000 that's what it holds and they're losing that every single month dead [15:41] young beautiful people and it's got to stop you know it doesn't affect us but i'm able to get them [15:50] together and we're meeting now right now as we speak and the meetings are going okay but we're [15:55] trying to get it settled only because we want to say it doesn't affect us as a country but it affects me [16:02] 25 000 people a month are being killed [16:07] mr president a number of senate of gop members are urging the conference to delay their leadership [16:13] votes tomorrow we know that john thune is running on a post in the senate do you think that mr thune has [16:19] earned the right to lead senator well look he's a very fine man i know him very well [16:25] but that's really up to the senators i like john thune uh i wish they could get more produced you [16:32] know we we've had save america up there we've had you know voter id and proof of citizenship and many [16:39] other things uh it's not easy uh he's got some people that first of all you have 100 negative democrats [16:46] they never vote yes they always vote no that means yes they get almost 100 of the republicans and [16:52] you have some republicans in there i can name them but why should i that are very difficult and [16:58] you know i said as leader you have to get those people but john's a good man i guess they're going [17:03] to be voting tomorrow or maybe it's delayed i don't know what the status but uh you know he's a friend [17:08] of mine i wish the senate could get more done about venezuela uh do you plan on having elections [17:18] there before the end at some point yeah at some point yes mr president uh earlier today you posted [17:24] on social media where you questioned whether the midterm election results were honest yeah [17:28] believe that the election was rigged and separately did you did you watch uh senator thomas massey [17:35] lay out his articles of impeachment no i don't watch massey look nas massey's a loser um he shouldn't be [17:42] taking up the time of uh congress or the senate or anything that he's doing you guys are stone-cold [17:49] loser would always he's a republican always he would vote against you just we could come up with the best [17:55] bill we could come up with and he would always vote against there's something wrong with him and i said look [18:02] i've got to challenge him and i challenged him and he lost in a landslide to a very good man we have [18:07] a very good man ed kilrain who's great took his place but you know i went and did something that [18:14] is very tough to do now i challenged others also i challenged cornyn i challenged uh tillis and i [18:21] challenged uh if you look at louisiana cassidy three so that makes things a little bit harder to get [18:28] their votes because i wouldn't say they like me but of all of them i would say there's something [18:34] wrong with thomas massey he was an automatic no vote you could go in with the greatest bill bills [18:39] were even democrats were voting and he'd be no and i said what is wrong with this guy he's a sick [18:46] sick guy there's something wrong with him actually now he's he's after pete he doesn't like he said [18:51] but really what has he done he won the war he was in charge he won the war in venezuela [18:59] as i said 48 minutes it was flawless nobody killed and he certainly i think he's won the war [19:06] in iran but he's certainly winning the war iran would love to make a deal and they've been obliterated [19:12] their navy and their air force so he won the war in two places two big places very important very [19:21] impactful and they were one they're not like vietnam when nothing was one or afghanistan or iraq or [19:28] any of these wars when nothing was one there was nothing more just lots of death and then let's [19:33] leave in one case he's not they're not going to have a nuclear weapon in the other we're making [19:38] hundreds of billions of dollars for this country so i say this pete hexath won two wars oh let's [19:47] impeach him what about impeaching the gentleman from biden his person that disappeared for two weeks [19:56] and nobody had any idea where he was what about impeaching the people that ran the vietnam war what [20:02] about impeaching that went that ran iraq and afghanistan and all of these other wars where [20:10] thousands of lives have been you know we lost 18 people 18 they lost 65 000 in vietnam we're in there [20:20] for seven months they're in there for 21 years he says what about impeaching those people what about [20:26] impeaching the leaders of these stupid wars that were done when nothing was gained in iran they won't [20:33] have a nuclear weapon that's a big thing now short term probably bad for me because people want to have a [20:39] little bit lower energy cost we'll get it back down i created the lowest cost you know it's even lower [20:45] now than it was with biden and obama but i've done something different they won't have a nuclear weapon [20:51] that's a big thing and with the other we're making a fortune and we have tremendous amounts of oil [20:56] we're going to have we have more oil including venezuela than saudi arabia and russia combined by far [21:05] in fact by two yeah please sir to follow do you believe the midterms well i think the numbers were [21:12] terrible in terms of those early votes you look at all those early votes and and look at another one [21:18] i'm watching alaska so you have a guy named dan sullivan and another guy named dan sullivan runs [21:25] and one's a j and one's an s and the one with the j which is the fake dan sullivan tries to have his [21:31] initial change to s he never ran before he never was a political person before he was fraudulently put [21:40] in the race and then they tried to change his middle name so it was an s to confuse so dan sullivan and the [21:48] woman peltolla is they're very close he's only i guess he's four or five hundred votes [21:56] but this fake dan sullivan because of confusion only because they're meant to vote [22:00] has two thousand five hundred almost three thousand votes that means he wins the election but in addition [22:06] they have a second person they put in and they made a big issue with the second and that person is [22:12] four thousand or five thousand votes those votes should go also but even if you don't include that [22:19] you have a dan sullivan and a dan sullivan and the democrats put him up in order to confuse the voters [22:28] so anybody that voted for that second dan sullivan the fake dan sullivan was supposed to be a vote for [22:34] the real dan sullivan so they stole it and that election should be called right now because dan sullivan won [22:42] easily if you add up the numbers now if you add up the numbers for the second person they put in [22:48] he's leading by six seven thousand votes go ahead please [22:57] yeah i'll stand by so even if he's impeached you're going to keep your defense secretary he went to wars [23:02] he was in charge we all won i had great people you what massey says that he's carried out massey's [23:09] a loser just like you're a loser at cnn just like your ratings are a loser massey is a loser stone cold [23:17] loser uh i ran i did something that nobody's done i took on a guy that was in his own way sort of [23:24] popular in his state and i beat him badly beat him easily with a man that never ran before but a good man [23:34] uh massey has a lot of hatred in his heart i watched i heard what massey did i don't want to [23:41] watch i don't want to waste my time watching him uh we won two wars we won two wars and we've made the [23:48] world a lot safer place and then we're supposed to beach why haven't we gone after all these other [23:55] people that ran wars that lost what about this what about what about what about good old lloyd why [24:01] didn't we go after him why didn't we go after the people that disappeared they're in charge of the [24:06] military and they disappeared from nobody knew had any idea that nothing happened to him uh what about [24:14] all these people that lost wars you don't have to all i can say is this we have the highest recruit [24:21] the recruitment numbers of you know when i came in when i was campaigning we had the worst recruitment [24:30] people wanting to join the military in the history of our country we couldn't fill any of the spots it [24:35] was a disaster now we have the best numbers we've ever had more people want to be in the army navy [24:41] air force marines coast guard even the police space force firemen anybody with a uniform so now we have [24:50] the best numbers we've ever had and i will say this the soldiers the actual soldiers the great people [24:58] that do the work the great patriots they love pete hexath so if you go back two years ago before i got [25:06] into office two years ago we could not recruit people and you know that better the army was way [25:13] beyond everybody now we have waiting lists of people trying to get in he's done a very good job [25:19] you have given vladimir putin multiple deadlines over the last 22 months to enter into a ceasefire [25:35] but also to meet directly with the lodemir zelensky he has repeatedly ignored your demands yet you have [25:41] provided has he been fighting us in the war yeah let me ask you this question what point does appease [25:49] who are you with who are you with with ms now what and what that's now it's a fake that's nobody [25:58] it's the worst ratings in their history used to be ms dnc it's one of the worst uh you're a fake [26:08] we're going to continue to monitor president trump in the white house briefing room as he takes [26:13] questions from reporters but if you haven't been watching all of it let me try to briefly summarize a [26:17] couple of things and they don't actually in every respect line up here's what i mean about 20 minutes [26:25] ago the president was asked why not declare victory and say the war with iran is over he said we can't [26:32] because iran is still in his words a kind of bully in the region in the middle east and we want to make [26:37] sure neighboring countries are taken care of about 15 minutes later he said the war was over and the war [26:43] had been won and the defense secretary pete hegseth had won the war with iran those things don't [26:49] exactly add up but they're what the president said in the white house briefing room also he was asked [26:54] about jensen wong the ceo of nvidia who is under investigation by the board of nvidia because he [27:01] had an extramarital affair with a woman who u.s intelligence believes was an espionage agent for [27:09] china president trump said he called jensen wong today and asked him did you know this woman with [27:16] which you were having an extramarital affair was a chinese espionage agent and he said jensen wong [27:22] told him no i had no idea about that at all and the president took that at face value said he believes [27:28] jensen wong is an honorable person and believes he will be fine even though it is the board of nvidia [27:33] 4.5 trillion dollar company that launched this internal investigation with an outside law firm [27:40] over the weekend uh nancy cordis is in the briefing room that's why she's not with us as she might [27:46] typically be at this hour of the day here on the takeout but quite happily for us you're joined by one [27:51] of our other excellent white house reporters olivia rinaldi you took lots of notes there olivia far more [27:56] than i did i got to a couple of bullet points pick up other impressions you took i think you forgot about [28:01] pete rose oh that's right i forgot about pete rose not getting yes yes i thought we talked about baseball [28:06] here on the takeout major i thought that would have been number one um also in that briefing room [28:11] was dana white and i thought that was important because this was an unannounced press briefing that [28:16] the president threw on today and dana white is in that room with him and trump had said as far as dana [28:21] white being in there he kind of ruminated on making him press secretary during what he called [28:25] a bad press day and when he said it there was a reaction quickly remind the audience who dana [28:31] white is yes he is the leader of ufc the big fighting championship organization uh which whom [28:37] the president is very close with dana white they put on a huge yes fourth of july south long fight [28:43] major to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country yeah and trump trust his opinion he calls him [28:48] often to ask him about what he thinks um he's kind of in that joe rogan bro sphere manosphere that [28:54] trump likes to check in on every once in a while so dana white took about two questions from the podium [28:58] but he backed away rapidly like i'm not really ready for this he said i'm shocked you guys are [29:02] asking me questions and but did not say whether or not he's actually the press secretary and trump said [29:08] i said it jokingly but maybe so you know kind of leaving the door open there kind of in an interesting [29:13] way one more note on jensen juan the president also said that the fbi is investigating him i believe [29:18] that's the first time we've heard that today that's a good note that one escaped me that's yeah i mean [29:22] on the jensen wong story ladies and gentlemen just stay tuned uh this this story is far from over it [29:29] hasn't run its course in any respect though the president keeps trying to sort of wrap jensen wong [29:35] in this cocoon of presidential acceptance honorable person he'll get through this fine um not necessarily [29:43] prejudging things but certainly giving the board and everyone else who's looking into this kind of [29:47] a presidential suggestion that jensen wong is just fine as far as president trump is concerned almost [29:52] an off-ramp and i thought what was also interesting was jensen wong went with the president in may to [29:57] china on that big state visit that's big state trip that they have and when the chinese president came [30:03] here uh about a month ago or so or two months ago rather in september he was also at a lot of meetings [30:09] with xi jinping and so the president was asked were you aware of these allegations that he was having [30:17] an affair with an alleged chinese spy when he came with you to china in may and the president [30:21] said nope i was not aware of that at that point and next week the president will be heading back [30:27] to china for another visit and it's expressed at least some general openness to taking jensen wong [30:32] with him and now the reason this matters ladies and gentlemen is if in fact jensen wong he had an [30:38] affair with this woman if she in fact is an espionage agent for the chinese government anything that jensen [30:44] wong and she talked about in private could be relevant to nvidia it could be relevant to national security [30:50] it could be relevant to the things that president trump has on his mind that are china related or [30:54] regional related we don't know but this is what hostile foreign governments do it's called a honey [31:00] pot you try to create a scenario in which you can get compromising information by setting up someone [31:05] to have a romantic relationship with someone who is either in government or in a very high position [31:10] in the private sector and jensen wong is near the very top in america in the private sector interacts [31:14] with president trump on a regular basis almost one of the most important people in america and it's [31:18] interesting for two more reasons one nvidia has a very robust internal security system so the fact [31:24] that this perhaps slipped that is concerning but also just for chips in general part of the entire [31:31] conversation that's happening in washington at a level is about artificial intelligence and will we [31:36] beat china in that the reason why this is so astounding is because nvidia makes the chips that are [31:42] necessary for the u.s to be ahead in that race so the fact that he could have been having this affair [31:48] or allegedly having this affair with this spy and she may have access to some of that information [31:53] and the allegations underneath it are that he softened a little bit on wanting to sell those chips [31:58] to china could be a problem for u.s artificial intelligence developers for the military for the [32:05] government for a whole host of reasons this is just bigger than an affair olivia stay here don't go [32:10] away and if you have a question for our next guest you go ahead and lob a question in but i want to [32:14] bring in ian duncan and joins us from the washington post he's a tech policy reporter there ian you've [32:19] been listening to our conversation i imagine you heard a fair amount of what the president trump said [32:23] as i suggested sort of wrapping a rhetorical uh life raft around jensen wong basically saying he's [32:30] honorable and everything looks okay to him help my audience understand where this story is and the [32:35] biggest outstanding questions that are being asked yeah uh i think the biggest outstanding [32:41] question really is going to be what did uh jensen huang and and this woman discuss what might she [32:48] have learned that could have been sensitive about the company you know i think um he and his note to [32:54] employees yesterday and his some of his allies tried to frame this very much as a kind of a personal [32:59] matter and affair that was about him and his wife um i don't think that's going to satisfy a lot of [33:04] people in washington who are going to have much broader questions about what happened here and when [33:11] we convey to our audience as we have that u.s intelligence suspects that this woman with whom he [33:16] had this extramarital affair could be an espionage agent for the chinese government that's a pretty big [33:23] deal right yeah absolutely this is a company that is incredibly important to the whole kind of ai economy [33:32] um it's all kinds of reasons why the chinese are trying to catch up with the u.s any kind of edge [33:39] that they can gain they they seem to have uh you know launched an operation to try and gain an edge and [33:45] had what seems to be some success in that so um it just touches on a lot of questions about the national [33:53] security of the country and the economy and the future of this technology and olivia rinaldi mentioned [33:59] that you heard the president say the fbi is involved that was new news to us was it new news to you [34:05] yeah and it wasn't exactly clear as it often is when he's sort of speaking off the cuff like this [34:11] what they might be looking into i mean i think if it was a counterintelligence thing you would expect [34:15] the fbi to be looking into it um so there's definitely gonna be more questions about what their [34:21] role might be here excellent ian duncan the washington post i appreciate it very much i want to turn [34:27] out of cbs news congressional reporter taurian small taurian a lot going on in capitol hill [34:32] today lots of incoming members arriving it's going to be interesting to see how many republicans who [34:36] were just defeated actually show up for work this week but let's start with a topic that was also [34:42] on the president's mind because he got several questions about it the future of pete hegseth the [34:46] defense secretary the impeachment question is going to reach the house floor sometime later this week [34:50] correct correct and i just want to tie up that thread since you guys were on nvidia [34:55] a number of lawmakers including uh speaker or soon to be potentially speaker hakeem jeffries now [35:01] minority leader and representative jim himes the house ranking member on the intel committee [35:07] today confirmed that they had received no intel before this gang of eight meeting that they had [35:13] with ratcliffe and others from the intel community from the trump administration on that [35:18] situation it was puzzling to himes especially who said uh it was unbelievable that he heard [35:23] absolutely nothing and he's the top democrat on that respective panel to pivot to hack stuff like [35:29] you brought up in which the president also mentioned uh thomas massey the republican from kentucky [35:34] led the charge on this and this comes after he attempted a similar effort in september that was [35:40] ultimately defended defeated because house speaker mike johnson recessed uh congress now he's introducing it [35:47] today because it creates a two-day window for the speaker to uh act major and taurian what can you tell [35:56] us about leadership races and where they stand this afternoon yeah it's likely that democrats will go [36:03] forward with their uh leadership election at least in the house when it comes to the senate that's where [36:09] it gets a bit murky at least on the democrat side we know that there's a number of democrats uh who are [36:15] uncommittal on uh going with schumer again for majority leader when it comes to republicans there's been [36:22] a a growing surge or a number of republicans who said we need to hold off before we hold an election [36:28] because we need to really assess what went wrong in november that caused us to lose as majorly as we did [36:34] senator jim banks senator uh kennedy senator ron johnson a number of them saying let's hold off and wait a [36:40] bit before we elect our next leader taurian small capitol hill thank you very much as you might gather [36:46] ladies and gentlemen when the president has a press conference and it sort of uh knocks us off [36:50] schedule here at the takeout we're juggling things as we go on but as we juggle real time i [36:54] want to bring in our national security analyst aaron mclean he's also the host of the most excellent [36:58] school of war podcast did you hear what the president was saying in the briefing room major i was [37:03] listening right along with you okay you heard the part where he said it's not over ron's still a bully and [37:10] then you heard 50 minutes later said it's over and pete hexeth won that's right that's right can [37:15] can i be confused you can be confused in that latter context it definitely did not sound like a [37:19] president who's about to throw pete hexa not in the not in the slide very robust defense on the war [37:24] itself look i mean we're not in major combat operations anymore like we were in the spring but [37:28] there's a naval blockade that's an active war there's an effort to escort oil out of the strait that [37:32] involves a lot of violence on a day-to-day basis so there is a war prices are elevated that's an [37:37] uncomfortable fact for the president and for the secretary