it is just a first meeting in a very long relationship. >> david sanger, david gregory, maggie haberman, thank you. >>> we have been talking about syria because of the latest tragic event. cnn is on the frontlines of what is a brutal civil war. talking to survivors of a chemical attack that killed more than 80 people. the victims in their own words. next. you do all this research on a perfect car, then smash it into a tree. your insurance company raises your rates. maybe you should've done more research on them. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise your rates due to your first accident. and if you do have an accident, our claims centers are available to assist you 24/7. call for a free quote today. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. ♪ can i get some help. watch his head. ♪ i'm so happy. ♪ whatever they went through, they went through together. welcome guys. life well planned. see what a raymond james financial advisor can do for you. >>> now to the horror in syria. the trump administration facing a crisis in the wake of the chemical

let's bring back ron brownstein and david sanger and jackie kucinich. jackie, president trump wants congress to pay $1.4 billion for the border wall. how will that work? >> not well. congress have been negotiating the spending bill for quite a bit. democrats and republicans trying to get to a deal to keep the government funded. this throws a wrench into that. back in march, senate sent republicans a letter this is a non starter. you heard nancy pelosi that includes funding for a border wall. you heard nancy pelosi say the same thing. you heard republicans d s say, should not be part of the spending bill. you may see a coalition of democrats and republicans that don't want to fund something that funds the border wall to keep the government funded. >> somebody did a little enterprise reporter and they could not find anything along the border who wanted that. it is not a one-time payment. this is the first installment. what do you see down the road? every expectation of not a government shutdown, but short-term solution. that means it could come back to ha

charlie: david sanger from moscow, thank you for joining you. david: thank you, charlie. great to be with you. ♪ so you're having a party? how nice. i'll be right there. and the butchery begins. what am i gonna wear? this party is super fancy. let's go. i'm ready. are you my uber? [ horn honks ] hold on. don't wait for watchathon week to return. [ doorbell rings ] who's that? show me netflix. sign up for netflix on x1 today and keep watching all year long. charlie: we continue our coverage of the trump administration's big week on the national security stageful joining me from washington, david ignatius. foreign affairs columnist if the "washington post." and nikola burns who served as secretary of state for political affairs under george bush. i'm pleased to have both of them back on this program. nick, you said this was a remarkable day in the foreign policy history of a president. nicolas: it could be, charlie. donald trump is so unpredictable but rex tillerson went to moscow and said we're at the lot ehlo -- lowest points we've been with russia in recent memory. the

david sanger is the national security correspondent for "the new york times." he joins me from moscow and i join him by congratulating him on the rekip yent or tsh shall recipient for his team for a pull itser prize, congratulations. >> thanks very much, charlie. it was a great team, and all russia related. it was the story of the russian hack and the russian disinformation program. >> rose: so you get decide to d? did he always decide to do it it. has there been any reporting on the subject? >> well, that would be inside vladimir putin's head but we've seen this before. moments where he kept john kerry and even president obama at various points, sort of on tender hooks about whether or when he would meet. so we have seen this happen. although in this case, because he know mrs. tillerson from the days that tillerson was the chief executive of exxon mobile, it surprised us a little bit. cuz he was obviously dealing with a known quantity here. this was the first meeting, charlie, between anybody from-- senior in the trump administration. and vladimir putin. or at

david sanger fresh off a trip covering the secretary of state in moscow. and part of the "new york times" team that we should add won a pulitzer prize earlier this week. gordon chang is here with us in new york an expert on north korea and china. written books on both countries in fact. and msnbc military analyst, barry mccaffrey. a decorated combat veteran in vietnam. a ground commander in desert storm. and military experience throughout the world. you flew the most miles to be with us tonight. you get to go first. where do you think we are, we with a new president vis-a-vis north korea in your view? >> you have got a couple of dynamics going right now that add great unpredictability to all of this. the first is, as you suggested before, there is this consent that there's going to be pressure, and then engagement. well, this is not exactly a new policy. this is what bill clinton tried in 1994 during the '94 crisis. it's what at various points the bush administration tried first by trying to freeze out the north koreans in the first term and then engaging

this is really good for china. >> david sanger, to the subject of your piece this morning. the president watches cable news. he sees the images. anybody with a heart is going to be affected by them. now there's different talk than decidedly what was said days earlier about syria. could the same thing happen during the two days with the chinese leader? >> it could. i think where we're headed in syria and russia is something more akin to american policies. you could see that happen in china's case as well. in the case of china, you have a new leader in president trump going up against a now fairly seasoned leader in president xi. i think gordon had it exactly right when he made the point that to president xi, north korea is useful as a buffer and distraction away from the trade issues and south china sea. what does that mean to president trump? he has to try to layout to president xi as convincingly as he can, that the cost to china of letting this problem fester is going to be high. that means that he's going to have to describe how the united states will deploy more than ju

charlie: david sanger from moscow, thank you for joining us. david: thank you, charlie. great to be with you. ♪ charlie: we continue our coverage of the trump administration's big week on the national security stage. joining me from washington, david ignatius. he is foreign affairs columnist for the "washington post." from boston nicholas burns who , served as secretary of state for political affairs under george w. bush. i'm pleased to have both of them back on this program. nick, you said this was a remarkable day in the foreign policy history of a president. nicolas: it could be, charlie. donald trump is so predictable. rex tillerson went to moscow and said we're at the lowest point with russia in memory. donald trump a back that up. and they really took it to the russians and were extremely critical of what the russians had been doing in syria. rex tillerson brought it back, rightly to ukraine and crimea. tillerson ofto that russian interference in our election was a problem. that is progress. this relationship is at a low point in the russians are trying to underc

david sanger fresh off a trip covering the secretary of state in moscow. and part of the "new york times" team that we should add won a pulitzer prize earlier this week. gordon chang is here with us in new york an expert on north korea and china. written books on both countries in fact. and msnbc military analyst, barry mccalf re. a decorated combat vet plan vietnam. a ground commander in desert storm. and military experience throughout the world. you flew the most miles to be with us tonight. you get to go first. where do you think we are, we with a new president veis-a-vis north korea in your view? >> you have got a couple of dynamics going right now that add great unpredictability to all of this. the first is, as you suggested before, there is this consent that there's going to be pressure, and then engagement. well, this is not exactly a new policy. this is what bill clinton tried in 1994 during the '94 crisis. it's what at various points the bush administration tried first by trying to freeze out the north koreans in the first term and then engaging t

not simple. >> david sanger, let's talk about it internationally. a pivot on nafta. a big meeting at the white house about north korea. >> two pivots on nafta. we were told by the white house staff yesterday the president was getting ready to pull out of nafta. seemed strange. then he gets on the telephone and tux both his mexican and canadian counterparts. i'm not getting out of nafta. i want to renegotiate provisions of it. we think the initial announcement was meant for leverage. it was classic trump. they gathered all 100 senators in the meeting at the white house in a room that is not usually secure. they tried to secure it for this for a briefing on north korea that several senators called me afterwards and said i learned less from this than i read in the new york times and in the washington post. >> did he mention "new day?" >> they just didn't get that far. what was that all about? that was about showing the senate they are not for getting about them as they head into this. the policy they are pursuing is not a strange policy right now. it is maximum economic

david halperin, i'll let you take it to david sanger. i've grown up inside the foreign policy community since i was 10 years old. may not agree every time around but i always sort of knew where we were going. i have no idea where this team stands and if this team has the ability to do the job under this president. am i wrong to be completely at a loss as to how they are going to handle these situations and have bad feelings how the president will handle syria. >> with the exception of utterances by nikki haley -- >> not impressive, been there, done that. really? >> people not given a sense what trump doctrine is on any of these things. david sanger, most of the reporting in the run up to the chinese meeting starting tomorrow says this is the the beginning of the conversation, they don't expect a lot of major announcements t establish framework for future talks. is there urgency given north korea test and what we know about north korea, is there an urgency to come out of the meeting with some joint statement about north korea that is a de

david sanger, national security correspondent for the "new york times." thank you for your time tonight, sir. more to come tonight. stay with us. test >>> this is prudhoe bay, alaska. it's about 650 miles north of anchorage, right on the northern edge of the state. they've got a pretty big oil field up there, about 25 million gallons. it's a big hub for oil and gas exploration. and this is a government in box in washington, d.c. where you can find 170 public comments. the comments come from industry, oil and gas companies, steel manufacturer, chemical corporations and the like, and they're all writing the federal government to tell them about regulations that they do not like. that they say makes their job harder. they're doing this at the invitation of the president of the united states. right at the start of his term, donald trump asked tell what's you don't like about the federal government. specifically, what rules don't you like? and we -- maybe we'll change them. the president opened up that suggestion box. and this weekend "the washington post" cra

joining us is david sanger, noshl rrespondent for the "new york times." thank you for being here. >> thank you, joy. >> what can you tell us about the status of the u.s. attempt to use cyber technology to scuttle north korean miflgz? is it enough to have maybe saab tajd this test that they tried? >> it may have been used to sabotage the tests. it's very hard to tell very any individual test because there's so many things that can go wrong with a test. you could have american sabotage, you could have bad welding and manufacturing. north koreas don't exactly follow osha rules and they don't have the best quality control in the world. for any individual test, it's very hard to know. but as we spent the eight months investigating that led up to that story that you showed up on the screen which ran last month in the narcotics, we did find these highly increased failure rates after president obama ordered this increase in attacks. the statistics are hard to come by in part because the program itself is so classified. but there's an unclassified part of the effo

at any different point in an interview that david sanger and i did with him about foreign policy and the campaign you could have come away thinking he was an interventionist or an isolationist. you just took the quote on their own because term contradictory. so i think he has this sort of set of base, i don't mean political base, impulses. but it's almost like it's not particularly well defined, you don't know exactly what it means. i don't know if he exactly knows what it means other than as a feeling. >> rose: he also seems to believe as other politicians have, if you put me in a room by myself with xi jinping. >> that's exactly right. there's a level of hubris to him, obama did the same thing. this president said something pretty similar. it does not work that way. he was very struck this week when he, i mentioned before about the jaw dropping quote. it was something that was seemingless now but striking for a president and especially a president in the first hundred days where he talked about how hard this is. it's really striking, much more work than his old job. a because he ne

you are quoted in a "new york times" story by david sanger situationorth korea is the cuban missile crisis motion. why do you make that comparison? guest: north korea is on the verge of a nuclear breakout. it would be a game changer for the united states. in 19ban missile crisis 622 played out over the legendary 13 days. this crisis will not play out in 13 days but in the next two to three years. north korea's nuclear arsenal would approach 100 nuclear weapons. that is an arsenal roughly half the size of great britain's. the united states needs to prove to pivotious -- needs to diplomacy to constrain that program and prevent north korea from staying on this current trajectory. host: how do we know what their capabilities are'? guest: it is difficult to ascertain. but there are spy satellites and other forms of intelligence gathering. the level of their arsenal is a matter of testaments -- ofa matter of observations sites that we know to exist and the production rates of weapon-usable material. north korea has the enriched uranium and the plutonium route. attracted with iran, where we which

david sanger and alexis simendinger. announcer: this is "washington week." funding is provided by. -- >> their leadership is instinctive. they understand the challenges of today and research the technologies of tomorrow. some call them veterans. we call them part of our team. announcer: additional funding is provided by neumann's own foundation, donating profits to charity and nourishing the common good. coup and patricia ewing committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. by contributions to your pbs tation from viewers like you. thank you. once again, from washington, robert costa of "the washington post." robert: good evening. barely 100 days into his presidency, donald trump declared to syria and the world that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated. syria and its closest ally russia blasted the u.s. for its attack on air basin homes where aircraft launched a series of attacks on innocent civilians. many leaders praised the president's actions and the use of serin. it's a dramatic departure from mr. trump's position when they

we have david gregory, chris soliza and david sanger. great to have all of you here. david gregory, you heard president trump is accusing this judge of egregious overreach, basically suggesting that this one judge is an activist judge and is threatening national security. >> you know, this is a highly charged debate politically, but also legally because the central question is not an easy one, which is do you have an ability in the executive branch to attach strings to federal money for cities and local jurisdictions and can they deny you or not? is it the executive's job to be able to put those strings there or is it something that only congress can do? so that is an important, too. as a political matter you do have sanctuary cities that are seeking to deny the president and deny the executive branch on national immigration policy. and, so, that puts the president right where he wants, which is to have that kind of fight with who he will argue are activist judges in jurisdictions that are mostly liberal. so i think he wants this fight and it may as a legal matter go

david sanger with the times said it earlier on this program. china could have solved the north korea a long time ago. it has reasons for doing it, using north korea as a buffer to keep them from streaming in from that nigh and destabilizing the country but also encroachment by the u.s. military and south korean military close to china. some of it is just purely economic. now you've got a new president who says you have got to help us on this if you want some better relationship on the economic side of our relationship. >> what would be a win coming out of a meeting with the president of china? >> what would be a win is a shift in trade. as you know over the years there has been a big issue with many of these presidents when it comes to how much america buys of china's goods versus the chinese people buying american goods. a big win is trying to close that very wide gap. but also this president is talking a lot about pull right now. china has been very enamored in trying to buy our coal. i couldn't be surprise first-degree there was an energy pi

sanger. i want to begin with retired u.s. army general spider marks. general, obviously he's considering action. he is being briefed by the defense secretary. the joint chiefs were hastily called together for a meeting. this is not sounding like talk. it's sounding like action. is it imminent? >> it should be imminent. it's one of many acts that have occurred before. you have to maintain some kind of momentum. there has to be political will to do something. if assad is given time to adjust to the bellicose talk, his chemicals can be dispersed. his aircrafts can be dispersed. you can increase the likelihood of having a very bad are collateral damage concern and that's when what the cheechs are looking at. you want to make this a limited strike to achieve a very limited goal and then you take it from there. it gives this administration an opportunity to respond to this. >> you're saying we're talking hours, if not days. >> we're talking days. i would say within the next 48 to 72 hours, somethin

sanger of the new york times. gentlemen, you are the ones we need to hear from. general marks i want to start with what happened here. we have new soimt images we have obtained. i want to show them to everyone. what you're looking at right now is the air base after the strike. in white were the areas damaged. what you can see, though, is apparently no damage to the runways. what do you see here, general? >> what you see is both of the runways, the primary runways were not damaged. let's look back and see that the t-lambs don't have enough explosives in them to crater the runways. what the intended target were were the hangars for the aircraft that would allow for maintenance and storage and air defense capabilities and so on. those missiles went after facilities that would house aircraft or helicopters or you'll of those support america mechanisms that were necessary. it did not go after the runway. it was not cratered. >> general clark, is that just give the u.s. room to ton ante? they used a missile that didn't

we have david sanger, national security correspondent for "the new york times." let's start with the big picture of what happened last night in georgia. jon ossoff got more than 48% of the vote in this republican district that was home to newt gingrich, tom price, et cetera. by the way, he is not a household name, jon ossoff. how did this happen? >> yeah, first-time candidate. he came out of the gate running against donald trump. he made it clear his message was going to be make trump furious. that was one of his tag lines and that a vote for jon ossoff was a vote against trump. in kansas the democrat needed trump voters, in georgia it was sort of a clear referendum on how people felt about trump, about tom price who trump brought into the cabinet. the reality is the democrat did not get over the 50% threshold, but he so overperformed what a typical democrat would do, especially a first-time candidate, it's significant. you know, it gives the democrats at least more fire in the belly right now. there is going to this will go . you do have a little bit of a demo s

david sanger of "new york times" has been writing several articles, very interesting ones, about the u.s. using cyber warfare against north korea. and it might be that they succeeded in sabotaging that launch. but of course, by doing that, you're playing with fire because the north koreans are capable of their own cyber warfare. in 2014, they took down 70% of sony's computers in response to lm about killing kim jong-un. as for the parade, the same thing they do every april 15. we pay taxes, they honor the founder of the country. they parade vote the latest military hardware -- both the latest the ledger hardware and cool for experts by bringing these tubes out with a may or may not have an icbm inside. that was classic north korean showmanship. abouti want to ask you about bringingg north korea under control. your sense of f what are the options and the policy of china right now. >> i think we should all be mystified that successive u.s. administrations in the post-cold war period have attempted to outsource the north korea policy to china as though the united states and china mainta

. >> david, stay with us. we want to bring in national security correspondent dafvid sanger and sara westwood. david chalian, are the last two that showed us that people feel better about the direction of the country. is that what matters? you heard from people who said i'm not crazy about him. if you feel good about the country, it's a win? >> it does matter a lot. it gives donald trump an opening to try to grow his own support a little bit. something he has failed to do since taking the ovals office. on the other hand, on health care and immigration, it is trending away from him. so yes. having people have a positive feel about the economy and having americans think good about the way things are going in the country. that's good news for trump. he hasn't seized on it to benefit. >> david, the message is clear if you are willing to hear it. i voted for trump because i don't like what is happening in washington. the measure is the same for any change agent. one-page tax cut. that sounds good to voters' ears. w