Good evening. I'm Taj Greenley, Assistant Director of 92Y Talks. It is with great pleasure

that I welcome you to tonight's event, America's role on the world stage, presented with NBC

News and MSNBC. Now is my honor to introduce our moderator, NBC News political director

and moderator of Meet the Press, Chuck Todd.

Ladies and gentlemen, we invite you to Meet the Press.

Meet the Press.

Thank you. I don't know about you guys. I want Taj to do all the introductions.

What a terrific voice. We've all been sitting in there going. We're going to be listening

to him for a long time. And it won't be just introducing folks here. That's for sure.

Look, quick thank you on behalf of NBC News and MSNBC. I want to thank 92nd Street Y.

This speaker series that we've been developing, we've really enjoyed it. And I really think

you're going to enjoy what we're doing now. It's been a pretty important time. I know

a lot of people have a lot of questions. And we really thought it would be fun to get all

of our great national security contributors at NBC News. Get them all in one place and

not cut them off after five minutes. Right? So without further ado, sorry, let me get my

middle-aged couch here. And get proper introductions. No offense to everybody in the background,

so when you have an aberal, you start with the aberal. And so, aberal James Steveridis,

let's give him a hand. Bring them on out. A Naval Academy grad, of course, four-star aberal

and was the, served four years as the 16th Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, where he oversaw

operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and the Balkans, as well as the piracy issue

off the coast of Africa currently. By the way, he was vetted to be Hillary Clinton's

running mate in 2016. I don't know whether he feels that's a good thing or a bad thing.

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