From the New York Times on Michael Barbarale, this is the Daily.

Today, at nearly every turn, President Trump's own generals resisted his calls to deploy active military troops to the U.S. Mexico Ward.

So what exactly are 5,000 of them doing there?

It's Wednesday, November 21st.

So, as our reporter at the Pentagon, when did you first start to hear about this mission?

I was traveling with Defense Secretary Mattis to Vietnam and Singapore, and this was in October, mid-October.

And everybody's watching TV in the United States and watching CNN, because there was so much going on at the time with the run-up to the midterm elections and during that time.

A large group of people they called a caravan.

There were several rallies that I saw while in Singapore, in which President Trump started talking about this migrant caravan.

The Democrats want caravans. They like the caravans. A lot of people say, I wonder who started that caravan.

And I was headed to the borders, and then he started saying, you know, they're coming. This is a threat. This is an invasion.

That is an assault on our country.

I think he gave an interview with ABC News in which he called it an invasion.

They can't invade our country. You look at that. It almost looks like an invasion. It really does look like an invasion.

They can't. They can't. Oh, I think so. I think when you look at something.

And then at one point, he said, and if necessary, we're going to deploy our military.

As you know, I'm willing to send the military to defend our southern border if necessary.

So we got on the plane, and we're flying back as a 20-hour flight from Singapore to Andrew's Air Force Base.

And we asked Defense Secretary Mattis on the plane.

Trump is talking about this migrant caravan. Do you think United States troops will be sent to the border?

And Mr. Mattis said, I haven't heard anything about that. I haven't received any requests from the White House. And he moved on.

Helene Cooper covers the Pentagon for the times.

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