Meet the Press NOW — September 28

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1:11Welcome to Meet the Press Now. I'm Monica Alba in Washington, as today marks the start of the eighth month in the U.S. war with Iran that shows no sign of winding down, with President Trump rejecting Iran's latest diplomatic proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The closure of that critical waterway is driving up the price of oil, gas, and other goods for Americans, but now just over five weeks until the midterm elections. Now, recently, President Trump has claimed that Iran didn't want to make a deal until after the elections. But over the weekend, the president telling reporters he turned down a proposal from Tehran that would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz.

2:03It, of course, comes after the president threatened just last week to, quote, annihilate Iran if it doesn't make a deal to end the war. Yesterday on Meet the Press, Kristen Welker asked Iran's foreign minister if his country was prepared for the war to resume. We are fully prepared for the war to be resumed. And I repeat, we stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even if it comes to a doomsday war. But at the same time, we are ready, we stand ready for diplomacy. It is up to President Trump to choose. He wanted unconditional surrender in the previous war in two days, and now it's eight months that they are fighting with no result.

2:45A new aggression would be certainly the same. And despite the escalating rhetoric by both the U.S. and Iran, President Trump told Axios yesterday he expects more talks with Iran this week. And when asked if he was considering resuming strikes, the president said, quote, I'm always thinking about it. But as midterm elections draw near, President Trump is looking to convince voters that the war has been worth it, repeatedly touting his handling of the conflict while downplaying the economic impact it's having on Americans and promising a swift turnaround after the midterms. We have Iran. We'll never have a nuclear weapon.

3:23We're going to win that war very soon. That'll be over. And the gas prices will come tumbling down. We no longer have to worry about nuclear weapons with Iran because they're wiped out. But with the exception of oil, everything is going down. We have it going down. We inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country. And it's going really down. To be clear here, inflation did tick up in August. And while average gas prices are nearing$4.50 a gallon, oil remains above$90 a barrel. Here to discuss it all and joining me now is NBC White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, NBC News senior national security correspondent Courtney Kuby, and NBC News military analyst retired Colonel Steve Warren on set.

4:10So Yamiche, we'll start there at the White House. Are they concerned at all about the optics of rejecting a deal with Iran that could have potentially brought down oil and fuel eventually? Well, it's a key question, and I've been putting it to White House sources. And as of now, I have not gotten the sense that there's any worry that turning down this deal from Iran is going to hurt the president in any way. The president, though, has had contrasting messaging on this. When he was at the U.N., in his speech, he said that Iran was trying to really slow walk all of this because they wanted to make sure that there wasn't a deal before the midterms to try to hurt Republicans politically.

4:46But now the president saying that Iran is actually wants to deal very badly because they're losing. And the president saying he's not ready to make a deal with them. The president, though, has said that talks continue. And the foreign minister of Iran told Kristen on Sunday that while he is ready for resuming, possibly fighting, he also is hoping that diplomacy could also be part of this. So it's really interesting to see how the president is talking about this. But right now, it does not seem like the president is concerned about the fact that Americans are worried about gas prices that are, of course, connected to this war, Monica.

5:18And Yamiche, what do we know about the current status of negotiations with Iran since they have been so on again, off again? Well, our colleague Gabe Guterres just put that question to the president in the Oval Office. Take a listen to that exchange. Has your team spoken to Iran today? Yeah, I am. They have their mediators? Yeah. Yeah. Anything else you can share? Any movement on the Iran talks? We're going to win. As far as I'm concerned, it's going to be one way or the other. It's going to go pretty quickly. Now, the president has said that before, that things were going to be over pretty quickly.

5:55He's also said that he was going to have big decisions to make. And those decisions have happened, it sounds like, in terms of turning down a deal. But the president is continuing to say that talks are ongoing here, even as he has threatened to annihilate Iran. Interesting to see the diplomacy is still on the table here, Monica. Yeah, and it was just last week where the president said that he said his representatives, his son-in-law and special envoy, were meeting with the Iranian officials when really it was through mediators. So perhaps a little bit lost in translation there, literally, also with this president as we drill down on what these talks actually look like.

6:28But Yamiche, given how unpopular this war is, is there really an appetite within the administration right now to resume strikes? It's a good question. Another good question. It's really hard to get a sense of what there's an appetite for here, because the president has just continued to change what he's been saying. And it's also interesting to think about the fact that the president, while continuing to threaten these strikes, Iran is saying, bring it on. We're ready for this fight. We understand that if there's a, quote, doomsday war that has to happen, that's what the foreign minister again told Kristen on Sunday, that if a doomsday war has to happen, that they're ready for that.

7:05That being said, I also get the sense in talking to my sources that Iran and really the world, they've not quite taken president at his words when he's now threatening the annihilation and these strikes. People are taking it with a grain of salt, which is in some ways extraordinary when you think about the threat that the president's making. But that's sort of where things stand as these negotiations, again, continue, Monica. And you mean shifting from the foreign policy aspect to the domestic. The president in the Oval Office today seemed to downplay a bit of the concern on some of these increasingly competitive midterm races.

7:40Tell us more about that. Yeah, well, it was an interesting moment in the Oval Office because he was pressed on this idea that Iowa, which he was announcing a steel plant that's going to be built there, an investment, billions of dollars going to Iowa. He was pressed on whether or not he was surprised by the fact that a state like Iowa, a deep red state that he won, that there were polls showing that the races there and the midterm races are close. The president saying that he was surprised, but also saying that he believed those polls were, quote, fake and that the races weren't as close as they were or they appear to be rather.

8:10And we also know the president is going to a deep red parts of the country this week to campaign. All that to say, the president essentially saying that he thinks that Republicans are in a better place than what the polls are showing. Monica. Yamiche Alcindor, thanks so much for kicking us off. I do want to turn now to Courtney and the Colonel, who are here both on set with me. So, Courtney, given this latest rejection, tell us, what does it mean for current control of the Strait of Hormuz? Is that changing at all, or who is effectively controlling it right now? So, I mean, no one's controlling it.

8:42What we are seeing is there has been a pretty steady, either steady state of traffic flowing through both in and out. And there even has been a bit of an uptick in the last week or two weeks or so. So But Iran is still continuing to try to target many of those commercial ships that are going through. So, for instance, there was one day last week when about 60 ships went in or out, not all of them leaving the strait, but some of them going in. And the U.S. military, they were able to coordinate with about 40 of those ships to help them get safe passage. The military has cleared not just the southern part of the strait of mines and potential dangers, but they've also established these internationally recognized traffic lanes or shipping lanes, essentially, where ships can move in and out.

9:28But again, Iran can still reach those, and they are still showing not only the ability, but the desire to continue to target ships on a near daily basis. Fortunately, most of them have not been successful. And Colonel, the president argued that Iran overplayed its hand in these latest discussions, but what kind of leverage do you think the president is thinking about when he says something like that? What kind of leverage does the U.S. have at this moment when they are rejecting a proposal like this? Sure. I think the president is starting to see some of the slower moving efforts begin to bite in Iran.

10:02What do I mean by that? The blockade, right? No Iranian vessels really are allowed to move in or out of the straits. Additionally, the president has managed to bring some other nations into an aerial blockade. So neighboring nations are now forbidding Iranian aircraft from flying over or from landing in their areas. So these smaller things, seemingly small when we first started them, are now beginning to have a cumulative effect. They're starting to abite. So I think the president feels like they're starting to feel some pain. Now, Iran, for its part, says that they are fully prepared for war to resume.

10:37In terms of Iran's military capabilities right now, how would you assess those, Colonel? What kind of capabilities do they have if that were to resume in the way we had seen earlier in the summer? Sure. We know that their military capabilities are significantly degraded. However, they have not been switched off. Even the Iranian Navy, while we have certainly sunk a majority of their large seagoing vessels, the smaller sort of mosquito fleet that we've talked about before is still capable. They still have drones, et cetera. Additionally, their land forces are essentially unbothered, right? They're a large, significantly powerful land force remains intact.

11:19The missiles degraded. The Navy degraded. The land force still capable. Court, pick up on that, because then from the U.S. perspective, what do you think the targets would be if these military strikes do resume in this larger way? So the U.S. has had this goal from the beginning that we've heard from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the president, and other senior Trump administration officials of destroying Iran's capability to project power outside the region. So that would mean missiles, missile launchers, missile production facilities. As Colonel Warren was saying, yes, they have tremendously degraded much of that, but they have not taken them out.

11:56And in fact, there may be even some increase in production or new production of some of those capabilities. But then there's also the issue of drones. That's another thing that they really have to, if they really think that they're going to be able to stop Iran from targeting right inside the region or even outside, they've got to get the drone problem under control. And that means largely production of these and then their storage of them. And then, as Colonel Warren said, yeah, they still have a ground force that exists. So if the U.S. or any kind of a coalition were to go in and try to, in some way, degrade Iran's military capabilities, at some point they have to address that.

12:35And, Court, I want to talk about this exclusive reporting that you have about U.S. Marines who were injured in a recent Iranian attack, which we did not know about at the time. What are you learning about that incident? Yeah, and this just is a pattern of very little transparency about what's actually happening in the Strait of Hormuz and in that region. We've gotten very little detail throughout the course of this entire war, frankly. So what we learned was on September 14th, an Iranian anti-ship cruise missile struck some sort of a maritime vessel that was operating in the Strait of Hormuz. And that's really critical.

13:10It was in the Strait of Hormuz at the time, not the Gulf of Oman, not inside the Persian Gulf, but in the Strait itself. There were a number of Marines on board. Eight of them suffered very minor injuries, things like smoke inhalation, some headaches that could be associated with a traumatic brain injury, the kind of thing that they will return to duty within a relatively short period of time. But what's key here is it proves exactly what we were just talking about. Iran is continuing to target vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, despite the military presence, despite the military clearing the mines, despite this coordination system that exists.

13:43And even if they are just threatening the ships that are going through, that opens up the possibility of two very dangerous things for the international community. Number one, a ship gets hit. That's difficult for the shipping company, for the insurance companies, for the world economy. And then there is the very real possibility that U.S. troops that are there are injured or killed. It remains a possibility every single day. But again, we're just not hearing about it from the Pentagon. Colonel Warren, how significant is it that we're just learning about this attack now and the injuries? So two things that have to be balanced, right?

14:15Right. Historically, the United States military has been very public about the troops, the warriors that have been wounded or killed performing their duties. So that's one thing that we have to that we have to keep in mind. On the other hand, we think it's very important not to let the Iranians know if any of their attacks have been successful. So this is a balancing act that the Pentagon has to perform. I feel like they have swung a little more towards the side of don't say anything. And I think this, in some ways, is more difficult, makes it more difficult for the military to do what they want to do.

14:47But this is where we've landed. Does it suggest to you that there could be additional incidents like this that we just don't know about yet? I think that almost goes without saying. I think there are probably more incidents or some of the incidents that we do know about, maybe they have been a little bit more significant than we're aware of. I think this is something that we have to accept. I think that once enough time goes by, we'll get to the bottom of all of this. For the time being, the Pentagon is very much focused on protecting its information, on protecting, you know, preventing the Iranians from knowing if what they're doing is having any success.

15:20And, Courtney, how many months has it been without a Pentagon briefing on this war? When was the last one? May. Our last one was in May. Yeah, we had limited information. Absolutely. And think about how many things have happened since May. We've gone through ceasefires. We've gone through resumption of combat, everything, multiple times. Is there any sense that those will come back in any regular cadence? Not at all. We have no indication that they will restart. Important reminder. Thank you both so much for your analysis and your reporting. Really appreciate it, Colonel Warren and Courtney. And we are going to turn now to the latest in the investigation of an alleged terror plot in the UK.

15:53British police say that five men who were arrested on suspicion of terrorism and explosive offenses near a British Air Force base used by the U.S. have now been released on bail. Police arrested the men early Sunday morning near the Royal Air Force Fairford base, where the U.S. has been launching its long-range B-1 bombers used in missions against Iran. President Trump earlier today said the plot might be related to Iran and said he was surprised the suspects were released. Iran, for its part, is denying any involvement. NBC News international correspondent Raf Sanchez is outside that base and has the latest for us.

16:29Hey there, yeah, this was an unexpected development. British police announcing that the five men arrested at the perimeter of this critical U.S. operated air base on suspicion of preparing an act of terrorism are now being released on bail. Authorities say these men remain under investigation, but they are being released from police custody, which is just not what you would expect in a case where they are dealing with hardened terrorists. Now, we just don't have the full picture here, but one possibility was hinted at by the head of UK counterterrorism policing. He says that in the past, British authorities have dealt with situations with terror plots where people involved have effectively turned out to be patsies.

17:14In some cases, low level criminals who were hired to carry out an act, not realizing that they were effectively getting entangled in an act of terrorism. Now, one of the other major questions here is what triggered those arrests in the early hours of Sunday morning here at the edge of this airbase RAF Fairford. President Trump has suggested that these individuals were under surveillance for some time. But British police say that they received a call a little before one in the morning. And that's what led armed police to swarm into a small village down the road here. A British military bomb squad has spent hours and hours examining the three vans that these men drove into the area with, trying to figure out whether or not these were real explosives.

18:05So this remains an ongoing investigation after this somewhat puzzling development. I'll send it back to you. Our thanks to Raf for that report. And coming up, campaign crunch time. President Trump is set to hit the trail, including in Battleground, Ohio, as the White House hits the airwaves pro-Trump ads that were funded by taxpayer dollars. Plus, OpenAI says it's pausing all training for its most advanced models after even more AI agents went rogue, including targeting U.S. government websites. You're watching Meet the Press now.

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19:17Open a reserve account with TELUS and earn 7.75 % APY on your first$2 ,500. Want no funding limit? Open a Boost account and earn 5.29 % APY. Listeners, sign up with code BOOST6 to earn a limited time 6.5 % APY in your Boost account for seven days. Visit TELUSapp.com. T-E-L-L-U-S-A-P-P dot com. Tell us is a real estate and financial technology company. Tell us is not a bank. Tell us is not FDIC insured. My name is Annie Elise, a.k.a. your true crime BFF and host of the podcast Seriallessly. Now, I have been a true crime enthusiast forever, but I wished that somebody would break down the cases for me like a friend, giving me all the details, discussing every twist and turn.

20:00So I decided to create a podcast that does just that. Seriallessly with Annie Elise is topping the charts with over 6 million weekly downloads. I do the deep dives in these cases so you don't have to, diving into all the raw details, saying what we all are thinking, and doing it in a conversational way, just like you're talking with your best friend. So join me and let's talk all things true crime. Serialistly with Annie Elise. New episodes every single week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. Welcome back. With just over five weeks to go until the midterms, President Trump is set to hit the campaign trail this week, stumping for candidates in Republican strongholds in Oklahoma and Alabama, as well as heading to Battleground, Ohio.

20:41Speaking in the Oval Office this afternoon, the president also said he'll be campaigning in Iowa as he announced plans for a new steel mill in the state. Standing alongside him today, multiple Iowa candidates who are in competitive races and who have recently distanced themselves from the president on the Iran war, including Senate candidate Ashley Hinson. Despite Hinson's break with the president, this afternoon, he praised her candidacy and Republicans' chances overall in the state. When you see somebody like Ashley, one of the greatest politicians, you'll see it. She'll be one of the greatest politicians in America.

21:19Going to be highly respected. I know Ashley well, and she will be a tremendous success as a senator. She's going to bring a lot of goodies back to Iowa, which Iowa needs. Earlier today, Senate Majority Leader John Thune defended the candidates who are making small breaks from the president's policies ahead of the midterms while also arguing that the president has a key role to play on the trail. In a nonpresidential year, midterm election, obviously, you've got to get the president's voters out. And and he's going to be working on that. He's going to be in all these key states and juicing, you know, the the Trump voters, making sure they vote on Election Day.

22:00But in some of these races, too, you've got to appeal to the middle of the electorate, a lot of those independent voters. Joining me now is our panel. We have veteran political reporter Molly Ball, John McCarthy, former senior advisor to President Biden, and Stephen Hayes, editor and CEO of The Dispatch. He is also an NBC News political analyst. Thank you all for being here. OK, five weeks to go starting tomorrow, Molly. Let's look at that travel schedule. When you look at where the president is headed this week, what does that tell you about these initial goals with the Texas, North Carolina in the rear view coming up, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Ohio.

22:38Senator Thune said his role is basically to fire up the base. Is that what you see on this calendar? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what those places all have in common is they're all red states. They're all states that President Trump won by substantial margins. And so, you know, As Senator Thune said, the mission is get those Trump voters off the couch, those voters, particularly those infrequent voters who were such a huge part of Trump's victory in 2024. Get them to vote in a midterm, which they ordinarily might not do now. But as Senator Thune said, the double edged sword here is it might have the opposite effect on some of those independent voters to have President Trump in their state.

23:18And so you don't see him going to some of the swingier places, some of the bluer places where potentially the galvanizing effect on the anti-Trump vote might be more powerful than whatever he's able to do with the pro-Trump vote. And which is interesting because just a few weeks ago, he said he was going to try to go to some of these more competitive districts. Potentially, he pledged to maybe make 35 stops before election day. Does that seem realistic to you? Do you think he's really going to go to all of those places? We shall see. The president says a lot of things, makes a lot of promises, doesn't always carry them out.

23:55And I think what you see in this schedule is that there are a lot of candidates, maybe, you know, Susan Collins might be first among them, saying, you know what, that's OK. If you want to spend a day back in D.C. and not make it to my state, that would be just fine. And, you know, we saw the same thing in 2018 in a midterm, particularly a midterm where, you know, Trump is historically unpopular, where a Democratic wave seems to be building and the Democratic candidates are leading both on the generic ballot and in their individual races. He's not necessarily going to be the guest of honor everywhere on the map.

24:31OK, so coming up this weekend, Stephen, he'll be heading to Ohio, where, of course, there is a marquee Senate race, but there's also a pretty big governor's race between former Trump challenger Vivek Ramaswamy and Amy Acton. So what does the president's presence tell you about how much it could benefit either Senator Husted or Ramaswamy with that visit? Yeah, I mean, I think that if you look back at the president's success in Ohio in 2024, he won going away. And this should be a state where Republicans don't really feel concerns about losing these kinds of elections. But I think in Senator Husted, you know, we've seen he was one of the senators who was willing to go to the non-convention convention in Dallas.

25:12He hasn't wrapped himself, I would say, very closely to the president. But he hasn't at the same time run as far away as some of these other vulnerable Republicans or Republicans in competitive seats have. I mean, the fact that we're having a conversation about Ohio being competitive right now, given what the president has done there and given the results of previous elections, I think tells us sort of everything we need to know. And Senator Houston is interesting because he did call for an end to the war in Iran, but he did not vote for the exactly when it came time for the resolution. So how fine a line is that for him to walk?

25:44I mean, look, I think it's a vulnerability. I mean, if I were if I had been advising him, I would say, don't say one thing and do the other. I mean, it's sort of ready made for Democrats to say this is somebody who doesn't vote on conviction. Another big, important issue that Senator Houston has been talking about recently is, of course, the Ohio data centers. And so, John, he's been pushing for this Ratepayer Protection Act, which is aimed at curbing energy costs from those data centers. It did pass the House in bipartisan fashion, but Democrats are weighing blocking it in the Senate. So is denying Senator Husted a win here potentially bad optics on this issue overall that Democrats have spoken out on?

26:24I mean, Democrats and Republicans alike need to figure out a path forward on AI. It's something that we have seen in focus group after focus group that voters are concerned about. But the fact that Donald Trump is going to these states in the first place, I think, kind of tips his hand about his entire electoral strategy. and respectfully to the president and the political operation. I don't think it's really as substantive as trying to provide blocks here or there on legislation. I think that the president is aware that his numbers are tanking and he needs to show up in places that first told him that he loved him.

26:51So that's why he's going to these ruby red states. I mean, this is not a opportunity for him to expand the map. It's an opportunity for him just to be able to shore up the base. So I think it shows that Republicans are kind of running scared. And I think that there's an important contrast that's happening here. And it's a contrast that I welcome as a Democrat. Donald Trump is going into rooms with people who love him, and Democrats are taking the opportunity to go into rooms where people are hurting. And that's the contrast that we're actually looking for. Do you think that's a takeaway from 2024 and the difficult lessons that Democrats learned with former President Biden and former Vice President Harris, maybe not being as keenly aware of that need to kind of hear the people who are hurting?

27:26I mean, one of the lessons I think that we saw out of the last administration, which I served in, is you can sit and tell people all you want, that your bottom line is doing better. But if they don't feel it, they're not going to buy it. So I think the Democrats this time around, we're running with a whole new generation of leaders. We have really exciting candidates up and down the ballot. And I think that they're running totally different campaigns. Molly, let's talk a little bit about Iowa, because it was interesting that some of those who have been trying to kind of in a very delicate way distance themselves from the president were in the oval with him today.

27:54Right. When you talk about Ashley Hinson, who sort of said, no, I'm not going to appear with Vice President Vance recently at an event and all of those kinds of things. So when you do look at some of these candidates who have clearly tried to be outspoken when it comes to the war against Iran and on other issues, but are now also literally standing beside him, I mean, how much distance can they realistically create if they do something like that? Well, and how much difference does it make in the end? You know, when you're caught up in a wave year, there's only so much you can do. And I've seen both parties be on the wrong end of this type of a dynamic where you can parse every detail of do I appear with the president?

28:32Do I speak out against the president? Do I try to draw this fine line or the other? At the end of the day, if people are determined to send a message to Washington by voting against the party in power, they're going to do that and they're not really going to pay a lot of attention to those fine distinctions. Now, obviously, there are exceptions. And, you know, someone like a Susan Collins looks like she is potentially holding her own just because she's such a known quantity. But it's a very, very hard thing to do when your party's on the wrong side of this kind of a dynamic. And in a state like Iowa, where, yes, just like everywhere, Trump is unpopular, the war is unpopular, the farmers have also been struggling with the tariffs and then with the opposite of the tariffs, with what the president has tried to do on beef prices.

29:17And so there's a lot of sort of free-floating anger. And it may not matter what these candidates try to do. And the president claimed that farmers were going to be very happy after his meeting with President Xi last week. We've kind of been waiting to see if there was any kind of announcement that comes out of that to that effect. So far, nothing. But I do want to talk specifically about what the White House is calling PSAs, these series of ads the administration has released over the last couple of days, paid for with taxpayer money. Let's listen to a clip of the most recent one. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists.

29:51We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all. OK, so if that looked familiar, it's because it is almost exactly the same as a campaign ad that the president posted on his social media account over two years ago. So, Stephen, legality aside, because federal law basically prohibits and bans the use of this kind of public money for political advertising. Are these ads what Republicans want to see from the president right now? Are these helping him? Yeah. I mean, look, who knows why the president is doing this right?

30:33I mean, I think Molly's right. The president's political operation at the White House thinks that the goal here is to juice Republican turnout, to get as many of the people who showed up for the president in 2024 to show up for him again now. And if they had just released these on the Internet or, you know, put them, the president put them on his social account, we wouldn't be talking about them. One of the ways to make sure that we're talking about them is to say that they're paid for by the U.S. government. Now, it's totally inappropriate to do it. It may well be illegal to do it. I would wish that Republicans would come out and denounce public spending on these kinds of, they're not public service announcements.

31:10Nobody believes they're public service announcements. They're ads, and that's what they're doing. But in a very cynical way, I think they've got us talking about them. We talked about them on the Dispatch podcast today, like other people are talking about. I mean, to that point, John, this is sort of an administration that has used this strategy of asking forgiveness instead of permission afterwards, right? But then that is meaning that we're having a conversation about it. So does that kind of backfire in a way to highlight it? I'm not sure it's the conversation that the president wants, because let's make this really simple.

31:40if we were living in this great golden age of America with a thriving economy and people feeling like things are going well, you probably wouldn't need an ad to tell you that things are going so great. So I think that it's actually having the opposite effect. Because when I talk to voters and when I hear them in focus groups, the thing I hear over and over again from these persuadable voters is that they feel lied to. And I think that using taxpayer dollars on this only underscores that. Because he's taking something that you worked for and you earned and making it about himself. And we've seen that with the ballroom.

32:06We've seen that with the arch. We've seen that with two years of a presidency that is about self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. And when voters can't afford groceries, that's not what they're looking for from their leaders. He's not on the ballot, but he wants voters to think that he's on the ballot. But he is on those videos. We can say that for sure. All right. Thank you so much, John, Stephen and Molly. Thanks for the great conversation. Appreciate it. Up next, President Trump meets with one of the tech executives calling for a slowdown of AI development, even as the White House looks to speed it up.

32:35A leading expert on artificial intelligence and national security joins me next. Keep it here on Meet the Press Now.

33:056.5 % APY in your Boost account for seven days. Visit telusapp.com. T-E-L-L-U-S-A-P-P.com. Telus is a real estate and financial technology company. Telus is not a bank. Telus is not FDIC insured. My name is Annie Elise, aka your true crime BFF and host of the podcast Seriallessly. Now, I have been a true crime enthusiast forever, but I wished that somebody would break down the cases for me like a friend, giving me all the details, discussing every twist and turn. So I decided to create a podcast that does just that. Serial Slee with Annie Elise is topping the charts with over 6 million weekly downloads.

33:42I do the deep dives in these cases so you don't have to, diving into all the raw details, saying what we all are thinking, and doing it in a conversational way, just like you're talking with your best friend. So join me and let's talk all things true crime. Serial Slee with Annie Elise. New episodes every single week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. I like things my way, my coffee, my schedule, and my treatment. So I talked to my doctor about self-injecting with the Vivgard Hytrulo Pre-Filled Syringe, which contains F-Gartigamide Alpha and Hyaluronidase QVFC. It's injected under your skin subcutaneously.

34:18It means I can inject in my space on my time. It's my treatment, my way. Visit Visit VivGuardMyWay.com. That's V-Y-V-G-A-R-T MyWay.com. And talk to your doctor about VivGuard Hattrulo. Brought to you by Argenics. Welcome back. It seems like every day now we're getting new warning signs about the potential dangers posed by AI and new reporting about AI agents going rogue. OpenAI is now saying it's pausing the training of its latest AI models and disclosing several incidents from over the summer in which its agents searched federal government websites and acted in ways beyond what was asked of them.

34:58An AI evaluator also reported that agents that appear to have come from OpenAI tried unsuccessfully to hack into the Department of Education website. This comes a day before President Trump is set to discuss AI oversight during a meeting with tech executives. In an exclusive Meet the Press interview, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told Kristen Welker that self-regulation is not sufficient and neither is a so-called kill switch. The kill switch, that's kind of a weird thing. It's not enough to have a kill switch. We're not yet at the point where they autonomously grab computers and can't be shut down.

35:40So that discussion is just sort of shows how non-technical various people are. Joining me now is Mark Beal, president of the AI Policy Network. He was the first director of AI strategy and policy at the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and has testified before Congress about AI and national security. Mark, thanks so much for being with me today. Can you just please explain the significance of what OpenAI acknowledged in its report on Friday about these AI agents, again, going rogue? Yeah, it's really it's quite remarkable. We have a trillion dollar company who's building software and that software appears to be autonomously escaping the internal servers at OpenAI and going around on the Internet and causing felonies.

36:29And so the response from the public, from the administration, from the Congress has been, you know, if you can't control these things, what are you doing? We probably ought to think about stronger guardrails. And if you fail to do those, then you probably need to pause what you're doing. And this is exactly what's going on right now with OpenAI. But the other piece of this that's quite the more alarming part is that we're learning about these, the details of these incidents, kind of like in this drip, drip, drip. And I don't think even today anyone has quite the full story. So we start thinking about guardrails, you know, and the president has said his Department of Justice is going to be looking at this.

36:59We need to figure out how it is the government is going to get access to the information that it needs. So on one hand, are you kind of relieved that OpenAI has paused training of these latest models? Or are you more alarmed that the company felt compelled to actually do so? You know, I think it's a good sign that these companies are acting in a more responsible way. if they're taking the drastic steps that they're taking by slowing down their business, by stopping or pausing some of the trading in more advanced systems. And by the way, if they're not going to be building the next more powerful version of the system, it doesn't mean the economy is going to come grinding to the halt.

37:37We're going to still be pushing the fusion and adoption across the economy as a mechanism to promote economic growth and prosperity for all Americans. But opening eyes, doing the responsible thing. And as a result, I'm actually less alarmed now than I think I was even just a month ago. Okay, that's progress, I guess. We'll take that. And Bill Gates, as we just played there, told my colleague Kristen Welker that self-regulation is not enough in addressing concerns about AI. Do you agree with that? You know, I think time will tell. But if history is an indication, this field is moving at an incredible velocity.

38:14You know, the conversations even just six months ago were vastly different than they are today. Now it's a national topic of conversation. We should welcome that. And in terms of self-regulation being sufficient, I think, you know, the companies are making strides in the right direction. And, of course, the AI industry is driving the economy right now. And, you know, it's a multi-trillion dollar industry. It's going to be decisive for the United States to be a leader in that industry if we're going to secure the 21st century for our values. And so we have to walk a very fine line between accelerating innovation and doing the right safeguards.

38:45But I think in the limit, I don't think self-regulation will be sufficient. And the key conversation will become, what is it that the government, what role should we expect the government to play in oversight of this industry? So in your view, what guardrails do you think are needed and how soon do they need to be in place? I think we need some sooner than others. I think the first thing we need to understand is like we need the information about what's actually going on. So right now, Congressman Nathaniel Moran from Texas, a Republican from Texas, has put out some legislation that he calls the Incident Reporting Act.

39:15That's going to require some of these frontier AI companies to disclose to the federal government the details of what they know and when they knew it. I think getting this transparency is a critical first step. I think the second piece is, you know, verify. We're going to probably move to a regime in which third party testing and evaluation is going to be necessary to validate the claims that are coming out of these companies. And the government can play a role in that or could play a role in setting up a bunch of third party organizations that are more independent from the industry to run some of those testings.

39:44And then I think finally, as the vice president said, if you're building Frankenstein, you need to probably stop. And so I think with more information available to the government, with more testing and evaluation, it's going to give policymakers more signal about where actually the thresholds of danger are. And it's going to allow us to proceed and accelerate innovation in a smart but responsible way. Congressman Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, did call for more cooperation between the U.S. and China. Here's what he had to say yesterday on Meet the Press. Let's play that. Banning self-recursive, recursive, self-improving AI should not be controversial.

40:17China doesn't want to lose control over AI models either. In fact, as a much more closed society, recursive, self-improving AI is a bigger risk to them. And I do believe the United States can lead on a treaty that is both enforceable and verifiable, where we ban recursive self-improving AI and we have some monitoring of these frontier labs. So do you think, Mark, that China will come to the table to discuss AI? Is that realistic? I mean, in some respects, they already have. If we read the Chinese statement from the President Xi's visit in D.C. last week, it sounds like the United States and the PRC have agreed to establish a channel of communication related to some of these AI incidents.

40:59And they've agreed to set up a technical working group to evaluate the opportunities and the risks of this technology as it progresses. So we're already seeing a very pragmatic approach from this administration. I think both Capitals, Beijing and Washington, recognize the fact that these industries are very important for their domestic economies and that an incident could set the entire industry back. So where the United States and the PRC have a shared threat, they can have a shared response to that threat. And that conversation is now advancing, I think, more rapidly than I had expected. Yeah, we'll see how soon they may need to use that kind of crisis communication.

41:32Mark Beal, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Monica. After the break, we cover all kinds of diplomacy on this show. But by far the cutest and cuddliest diplomacy is panda diplomacy. We've got the latest on the very exciting news of two giant pandas arriving here in the U.S. That story is next on Meet the Press Now.

42:03Welcome back. Atlanta welcomed some unbearably cute arrivals over the weekend with two new giant pandas now calling the U.S. home. The pandas named Ping Ping and Fuxuang will be on loan to Zoo Atlanta for about 10 years as part of Beijing's long tradition of panda diplomacy. NBC News national correspondent Erin Gilchrist is in Atlanta at the zoo there with the best assignment of the day. This morning, there's pandemonium in Atlanta, with giant pandas Ping Ping and Fuxuang beginning their 10-year stay here in the States. I'm this excited. They just always seem like one of the most fun animals. They seem so happy.

42:46The two bears arriving on the FedEx Panda Express early Sunday morning following a 16-hour flight from China where adoring panda lovers lined the streets for a grand send-off. The five - and six-year-old pandas journeyed in style. Private plane, custom crates, and all the fresh bamboo, water, and treats they could handle. First class all the way, including a police escort to their new home at Zoo Atlanta. Ping Ping, described as a plump fellow who follows the food, and Fu Shuang, smart and playful, a lady who loves the apples. The zoo, now one of three in the U.S. currently hosting pairs of giant pandas, but it's no stranger to the unique animals.

43:26The zoo ended its original panda partnership with China in 2024 after a successful 25-year agreement. The original pair, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, giving birth to seven cubs, all part of an international conservation and diplomatic effort that dates back to 1972. China's President Xi Jinping tipping us off to this weekend's new arrival at the White House last week, calling it an envoy of friendship. Now, with an upgraded panda habitat, there's something new at the zoo, and everybody's excited. We saw the enclosure where they're going to do like the little pandas. And we saw that there's like water floutens and bamboo sticks.

44:06It's really cute. Looks cute. I already told him, I was like, once they're like settled in, we're coming back and seeing the pandas. I like that they're furry and they look like Oreos. Oreos. So cute. And NBC's Erin Gilchrist joins me now with more. Aaron, I think we can say that may be the first time on this program that the words plump fellow have ever been uttered. So you get kudos for bringing us that today. But the question on everyone's minds, when can visitors actually get their first glimpse of the new pandas? Yeah, that is the sixty four thousand dollar question, right? When are we going to see Ping Ping and Fushuang out in the open?

44:47I can tell you right now they're in quarantine. That's standard procedure when new animals come to the zoo. Typically, animals will stay in quarantine for two to four weeks. We think for these pandas, it'll be a little closer to the longer end of that, about a month before we see them making their public debut here. But I'll tell you what, the panda gift shop is wide open right now. It's been stocked with all the necessary things for people to feel like they can be close to the panda experience here while they wait for the pandas to be out on display, Monica. And we rated the store. We've got all kinds of goodies here now that we're going to be taken back with us.

45:24Amazing souvenirs and excellent reporting. Erin Gilchrist, thank you so much for being there for us. Still to come, from Julius Caesar to Abraham Lincoln, we're looking at elections that changed the world. This is Meet the Press Now.

45:47Welcome back. Those of us in the election watching business are, of course, all looking ahead to the upcoming midterms. But a new book looks back in time at some of the most important elections in history. The elections that changed the world. Fifteen pivotal moments that shaped how we live by CNN anchor and chief political correspondent Dana Bash. And it explores what some elections of the past can teach us about the elections of today. Kristen Welker recently sat down with Dana to talk about the book, which starts with a throwback. The election of Julius Caesar more than 2000 years ago. why?

46:20Why was that election of Julius Caesar as consul so important? Why did you want to highlight that? Well, because it was, the Greeks actually started it, this whole democracy thing, but the Romans were not far behind. And Julius Caesar is obviously so iconic. I mean, we know so much about it. And the reason is because it had so many elements of material that went into democracy, see good and bad. There was a lot of money in politics there, if you can believe it. Kristen, I learned and I didn't know that one of the reasons Julius Caesar ran for the highest office, which he then turned into pretty much a dictatorship, was because he was afraid he was going to get prosecuted or exiled.

47:03And he knew that if he was in the government, he would be safer. Fascinating. Yeah. And I think just even more broadly, why do this now? We are right before an election. And we always say and we always hear elections matter and elections have consequences. And the truth is, we don't really know when we're going to vote, whether or not that election is going to have a consequence beyond our lives in that moment or whether it will have ripple effects for generations to come. And you don't know until afterwards. Well, these are examples of elections that had consequences for decades, hundreds of years, and also, in many cases, global repercussions.

47:50Well, it's so incredibly consequential, as you say, parallels to this day. You, in fact, in total, write about 15 elections, and I want to read part of your book. You write, at important moments in history, The significance of certain elections was not who won or lost, but rather the election itself. Explain what you mean by this idea and why the election itself is so revolutionary in and of itself. It is because for for most of of humankind, leadership was about brute force, was about who won the bloody battles and wars and not as much about what the people wanted. And so that's why elections and we're so used to it, luckily, as as Americans, we're so lucky to be so.

48:42But elections are itself just such a gift for us. And if you go back, started with Julius Caesar, as you said, then the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta was the first real document that allowed for so many of the democratic norms that we have now. Judicial process, for example, that was like eleven hundred in in Great Britain. Many of the templates of that are used today, never mind the next one, which was the Mayflower, the Mayflower Compact, which was the first time that there was a real democratic process in North America. You highlight some elections that obviously we talk about all the time, the election of Abraham Lincoln, for example.

49:41You also highlight the election of Adolf Hitler, which changed history, which was such a dark chapter. What was that process like, Dana, for you personally, where you're going back through the election of Abraham Lincoln, this moment of incredible hope for this country? And then you also deal with some of the darkest chapters in history as well. Well, the Abraham Lincoln election ended up incredibly positive and hopeful after the Civil War was over. Well, well after the Civil War was over. But you could argue that it was also a very, very dark chapter as well, because people went to the polls voting for Abraham Lincoln, pretty much knowing that that was probably going to be the match that really ignited the Civil War.

50:30And it was true. I mean, he there was record turnout in 1860. It was like 81 percent of the electorate who voted. But he only got about 39 percent of the vote. And that's because no southern state voted for him. And and then sure enough, about a month later, after he was elected, South Carolina seceded. So it was very, very dark. Then got hopeful. And then, of course, yeah, Adolf Hitler. He, because it was a parliamentary system, the Reichstag was that parliament that was created, the Weimar government after World War I in Germany. And that's a cautionary tale of how a person can use the structure of democracy to take it over.

51:15Because he obviously was somebody who could get crowds going and worked very hard to do it. And with his leadership, they grew the Nazi party, which was kind of nothing to become part of parliament, grew that party. And then he took it over and became chancellor and ended democracy. Such an extraordinary moment in history. I wonder overall, Dana, was there something that surprised you in the process of writing this book and that made you reflect differently on the state of art, the democracy today? You know, it actually made me very grateful about the kind of democracy that we have in America, because it's really amazing how much the founding founding fathers with founding mothers whispering in their ear, of course, like Abigail Adams.

52:08They really got it right. It wasn't perfect. And, you know, it breathes and it changes. But parliamentary systems are wonderful, but they also allow for trouble to be made because you have to have a coalition government. The other thing that I learned, which, of course, since I'm sitting here talking to you, I don't want to go without saying, is how underestimated people can be when they are put in a position of power in a democracy and expected to be caretaker leaders just for a short period of time. And that was the case with the two women that we write about in here. My co-author, David Fisher, who I definitely want to give a shout out to, Golda Meir in Israel and Indira Gandhi in India.

52:56They're in one chapter because they came up around the same time. They were both put in the prime minister's office by the party leaders. They were also kind of founding mothers of their new democracies. And the men who put them there thought they're malleable. We'll keep them there. They're placeholders. They're placeholders, and we'll be able to tell them what to do. And good luck telling Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir what to do. Didn't work so well. Well, it's remarkable work. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And congratulations. And go vote. Again, yes, indeed. A reminder to go vote.

53:34Dana Bash, thank you so much. Great to see you. Great conversation. We'll be back tomorrow with more Meet the Press Now. But before we go, a special programming note. Tune in tonight for Common Ground, an NBC News special sponsored by Comcast, focused on what unites us as Americans. That's at 8 p.m. Eastern, right here on NBC News Now. There's much more news ahead.

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