BRIAN STELTER (HOST): Let me turn to the missing aircraft carrier, which was now actually I believe to be on the way to the Korean peninsula. April, what was your read on this? Was this another credibility blow to the White House?
APRIL RYAN: Yes. And this is not just talking heads stuff. This is something that the American public is talking about. We're seeing in polls the trust and credibility issue for this president is not there. It's very minimal, if anything. Now, when you come to an issue of sending an armada somewhere, you cannot just make that call in a moment's notice. I have talked to intelligence officials as well as generals to find out what happened, and they said you cannot just summon someone right now to turn. This has got to be something that's planned out, a strategy. So the issue of credibility was knocked right there with that statement.
STELTER: Does this mean, April, the next time President Trump says, quote, “We're sending an armada” -- that's what he said to Fox's Maria Bartiromo -- do you have to report that more cautiously, add more caveats, say, “Hey, we can't even confirm this is true?” Are you going to have to -- are we going to have to be more and more careful taking the administration's word on these matters?
RYAN: What we will do as White House press people, reporters, we will actually take what the president says and actually go in and find out what the real truth is. We will call generals, we will call our sources in the intelligence community and find out what's going on because, unfortunately, there is more of an onus to really take what he says -- the president or the press secretary or anyone in this administration -- and dig a little bit more to find out the truth, go into the weeds and find out what really is happening. So we'll take what he says, but also dig a bit deeper to find out where the truth may lie, if there is indeed a problem with the truth.
STELTER: Right. It's what we always do, but there's more pressure to do it now. It ended up being a military reporter just scrolling through Navy websites, seeing these pictures, informing us of what was really going on.
