A surge, an additional 750 Border Agents to the the part where they feel most stressed. If you wanted to make an already unstable situation much worse, you do what the Trump Administration is doing. We have right now two big caravans coming up from guatemala, massive caravans. Walking right through mexico. So mexicos tough, they can stop them, but they chose not to. Now theyre going to stop them. If they dont stop them, were closing the border and well keep it closed for a long time. Im not playing games. We need leadership from the oval office to collaborate with the leaders of this hemisphere. Even three months to go before the first democratic debate, a bunch of candidates are sharing the same stage here in d. C. These are people who are dialed in on this race and they want to hear specifics from these candidates. And this is just not votes, infrastructure support, volunteers. Pete buttigieg, not necessarily a national name, its the first candidate to disclose his firstquarter numbers, raising a stallering 7 million. I think this number from Pete Buttigieg really, you know, adds to the narrative that he has built some momentum in this case which is clearly true. There is a great deal of enter in his campaign. Begin this hour with some developing news about people inside the white house whose security clearances were flatly denied but then the Trump Administration approved them anyway. A white house whistleblower told congress that the administration overturned more than two dozen security clearance denials and trisha knew bold say applications for officials were, quote, not always adjudicated in the best interest of National Security. Get your head around that. She also says she was, quote, targeted for retaliation for decisions she made on the job. Remember that. We insentize employees. The reason people dont blow a whistle is fear of. Now joining me, National Security analyst. What do we know about this whistleblower, and the claims shes making . As you know, nbc news has been reporting on this issue for sometimes and Trisha Newbold has been doing this for many years under both republican and democratic administrations and is well regarded. What were told this overruling of security clearance adjudications by career officials is unprecedented, never happened during the Obama Administration or the george w. Bush administration, and now its happened at least 25 times. We reported as many a 30 times and one of the officials whos clearance was overruled was jared kushner, the president s soninlaw. And the New York Times is reporting that was done at the behest of President Trump. We know less about who these other officials are, but what trisha is telling the committee, there are real National Security concerns. This is a situation where the fbi or the cia or other Security Officials have flagged concerns in the background of these people, financial concerns, all sorts of matters, criminal issues, and have said, look, lets take a pause, lets not grant this person clearance and they were overruled and that person is cleared to see classified information and congress is saying they will subpoena the official who was doing some of that overruling, theyre going to do that as soon as tomorrow and demand that he come and testify. And who is carl kline . If the whistleblower at hand has been a career in this office, shes worked for both republicans and democrats, tell us about the person who overruled it . Carl kline is also a career Security Specialist but he was installed by political appointees of the Trump Administration and so he was heading the White House Security office for the first two years of the Trump Administration and separate and apart from this whole security issue, she suffers from a rain form of dwarfism and she has alleged that carl kline discriminated against her, including by placing workplace materials out of her reach so she couldnt do her job. Thats a very serious allegation that has nothing to do with the security clearance stuff. But shes saying that he overruled her and others on many indications on National Security matters. Ned, you worked with then president obama. Talk to me about precedent. How usual or unusual would it be for an administration to ignore the advice of its own experts on security clearances . Well, i dont think we can talk about precedent because this is literally unprecedented as far as i know. In a previous administration, overturning, overruling a reel adjudication decision for a security clearance for potentially political ends would be a scandal. Doing that 25 times appears to be a disregard for our National Security and thats what we heard from this whistleblower who told Congressional Committee members that in her estimation, it did not seem they were doing this in the best interest of our National Security. And that raises the question why . Was it to avoid embarrassment, far from being the best people as donald trump said he would collect, or was it to collect those close to the president or some combination of the two. This whistleblower has raised quite a few questions and it now seems like the committee is prepared to get chances. Okay. So lets say Elijah Cummings subpoenas this carl kline guy. Does he have the ability to claim executive privilege and say nothing because weve spent the last few weeks hearing a whole lot of, were going to get chances and people go, cant say anything. Ned . Im sure hell try. The committee has been trying since last year to get chances out of this white house. Obviously the House Oversight committee, the democrats have only had the power of the gavel since earlier this year and the white house has stone walled them at every turn. In the letter today, he made very clear that the white house has issued a peep and the committee went to Great Lengths to make the case that far from trying to meddle in what would be the realm of the executive branch over what the executive branch they have a right to know this information. Lets stay on that nar ri apeep issue. They could be asking, and demanding. If the white house says, thanks but no thanks, what does that get us . The white house has said that. But to date that has gotten us Trisha Newbold. She saw what in her estimation was unfair, unjust and dangerous to our National Security. When it comes to an issue like, this the stakes could not be higher. Theyre the first line of course because this they afford people to receive classified information that are intelligence professionals and others risk life and limb every year to collect, and that we spend about 60 billion to produce. But its also the last line of defense, stephanie, because our intelligence community, theyre quite good at safeguarding information, but people are people. And unless you have the best people receiving this information, people make mistakes, they have loose lips, whether intentional or not, they can say things that they probably should not. And so unless you have people who are supposed to and who are capable of receiving this information, its a tremendous liability to our National Security and quite frankly can cost lives and billions of dollars if programs are exposed. All right. Ned price, thank you. And, ken, thank you for your reporting. Unprecedented. Never happened before and were talking 20, 30 people. Why . President trump is now threatening to close the border with mexico and cut off aid to Central American countries. Were going to dig into those strategies and why they could make americas immigration issues worse. Youre watching velshi ruhle on msnbc. Utoglass, eally pride ourselves on making it easy to get your windshield fixed. With safelite, you can see exactly when well be there. Saving you time for what you love most. Kids whoa kids vo safelite repair, safelite replace 4 out of 5 people who have a stroke, their first symptom. Is a stroke. 80 percent of all strokes and Heart Disease . Preventable. And 149 dollars is all it takes to get screened and help take control of your health. Were life line screening. And if youre over 50. Call this number, to schedule an appointment. For five painless screenings that go beyond regular checkups. 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Last month there were more than 100,000 apprehensions with migrants on the borders, thats according to u. S. Customs and border protection. And now the president wants to cut off aid to central america. This is aid designed to restore law and order in countries that are overrun by violence and corruption which is why a lot of people want to leave them. Here is what his acting chief of staff had to say in defense of that. If were going to give these countries hundreds of millions of dollars, we would like them to do more. That is not an unreasonable position. We could prevent a lot of whats happening on the southern border by preventing people to move into thats what the money does, it makes those countries more stable. This is not according to me. This is according to experts in your own administration. Look, career staffers, but lets talk about that for a second. If its working so well, why are the people still coming . But usaid has working towards making improvements. And the own state department has the numbers to prove it. The move to end programs for honduras, el salvador, and guatemala would effect nearly 500 million and millions left from the prior year. The mission is to provide investment and partnership from the United States to promote Economic Opportunity and security for citizens of the region. Make it safer and better so they want to stay and thrive in those countries. The president wants to slash that aid so that the Central American governments will stop the migration of refugees but many critics say that aid deters immigrations and it will help the border. Even john kelly, said it himself. If we could improve the condition of hondurans, Central Americans, we can do an awful lot to protect the southwest border. One government report conducted in 2018 suggests that violence in the northern triangle was actually beginning to show signs of improvement particularly in el salvador and honduras. That year saw a total aid package of 655 million. The impact of that investment in agricultural in honduras alone helped lift 680,000 people out of poverty. Funds sent to guatemala boosted agricultural programming as well which helped increase rural farming sales by more than 50 . It created 20,000 jobs. Lets lets go to el salvador. 40 of aid focused on security and rule of law. On top of that, the funding gave 33,000 households access to electricity and put, listen to me here, 2,250 girls in school. That is not charity. Its smart policy. Joining us now nbc National Security and justice reporter. Lets put this in perspective, folks where in these countries for very little. A good wage is 10 a day. Theres risk from drug gangs, sexual assault, they end up coming to america where they can work as Agricultural Workers for a hundred or 150 a day. The only way to change that is to change the economics of that to make it safer for them to stay where they can earn more. And thats been standard policy from administrations going back dozens of years. You can even hear it in the president s rhetoric when he talks about how his own successful economy has drawn all these people here. Its an admission to the economy those countries isnt very good. I think whats clear today, were midday on monday, is its clear that President Donald Trump wants the focus to be on the border. Hell be visiting later this week. What isnt clear is whether or not he is serious about shutting it down, about sealing the border, whether or not hes bluffing or whether or not hes actually planning for it. And you can make a case on both sides of the ledger. On the planning side, Patrick Shanahan was asked ability it earlier today. He said, not yet, not yet are u. S. Troops down there sealing the border. But he hasnt spoken to Kirstjen Nielsen yet. But on this idea of what it would do in the economy, its clear that they havent costed this all out about what it would cost the economy if you shutdown the border. For a president that touts the economy, the stock market, looks at indises all the time, its clear that shutting down that border would have an Economic Impact and it would be a difficult case for him to make that his presidency is going to be tied up especially heading into the reelection, what it would do to the economy. Shut down the border, kick them out, those are things we hear the president say all the time. But take us local. You have spent a ton of time on the border. When i was there, i spoke to the mayor of mcallen, texas, about the migrant crisis and heres what he said. When President Trump presented the idea of the border wall, how did that sit with you and this community . I think just the border wall itself, we have problems with that for landowner rights, splitting parks in half, i dont think it affected our relationship with mexico until he said were going to pay for it. Then we had a backlash of not only worried about what the wall was going to do to your community, but resentment of mexico, were very strong on tourism. So hes talking specifically about the negative effect on the economy. He went on to say, if weve got money to spend it on a wall, spend it on aid to those countries. When aid went down, thats when crime and violence went up. Thats right, stephanie. For people on the border, the immigration issue is very nuanced. They get a lot of their commerce from people coming from mexico every day to go to school, to work to use their businesses and this commerce goes back and forth all day long. To shut those down would hamper these towns more so you could argue, than the immigrants who are coming into these towns now. As we know, immigration is really a matter of push and pull factors. Im glad you referenced general kelly, because when he came in as secretary of Homeland Security he talked about how they wanted to do more to invest in central america, to drive down what they call the push factors t violence, the poverties, the reasons people leave. Weve seen theyre focusing more on the pull factors. They think these are reasons why people come here to exploit our immigration loopholes and they want to crack down on people seeking asylum. That surge on the border that were seeing today, those people are going there to make it harder for Asylum Seekers. Secretary nielsen says they will be expanding their policy where they turn back Asylum Seekers and have them wait in mexico. Theyre not from mexico. The majority of them are Central American families and have them wait in these towns until they can come to the United States. Thats a practical thing, were seeing, shae wants hundreds more to be turned around in a day. People who would be involved with the operational part of that say they have no plans to do that at this point but they reserve the right to shut down parts of the border for short periods of time. We did see some of that right around the time of the honduran caravan. People were worried about being able to do business. All right. We know that the aid can help those Central American countries in the way that weve laid out. There is an argument that aid gets funneled to corrupt leaders or legitimatizes gangs and we keep giving money and things dont get better. Theres no consensus in the Development Community on how you alleviate poverty in the developing world. Just a few blocks down from here, theres the world bank, they spend time and effort on having programs to build and lift these economies up. With a consensus has been, is you need to do more trade, more commerce, and thats the way to really ensure that these economies are sustainable and vibrant. What there isnt a lot of talk about is suddenly pulling out the rug, having programs that are in place there, things that you