MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace shared “shocking” new reporting from The New York Times, which she said could show that President Donald Trump is “asleep at the wheel in protecting U.S. national security.”

On Thursday’s “Deadline: White House,” Wallace discussed the Times’ “blockbuster” report about a Chinese businesswoman’s close relationship with Jensen Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia, the world’s most dominant leader in artificial intelligence chips. U.S. officials concluded the woman was a Chinese intelligence asset, according to the report.

“The discovery that Beijing was getting reports from someone with direct access to Mr. Huang, one of the most powerful figures in the A.I. revolution as well as an influential ally of President Trump’s, set off alarms at the White House,” the Times reported.

“What happened next,” Wallace said, “is the stuff of international political scandals.” The Times said Trump was briefed on the intelligence findings but chose not to act. He had “been wary of disrupting Nvidia’s chip sales, which are helping to drive the economy and the stock market, and of further complicating the trading relationship with China,” the report read.

“Donald Trump — the man who claims that no one is tougher on China than he is — does nothing,” Wallace said of the president’s reported inaction. She described “panic among our intelligence agencies as Trump sat by as a Chinese spy got dangerously close to the CEO of America’s most valuable company.”

Nvidia denied that its CEO had been targeted in a spy plot. The company told the Times that “Jensen’s interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected” and that he “talks with thousands of customer executives every year.” The White House, the CIA and the National Security Agency declined to comment, according to the Times.

Wallace also pointed to “close financial ties” between Trump and Nvidia that were described in the report. A person familiar with the matter told the Times that Nvidia donated at least $20 million to Trump’s White House ballroom fund. Earlier this month, Trump disclosed that he bought up to $1.6 million worth of Nvidia stock and sold up to $1 million in August.

Wallace said the report exposed a gap between Trump’s public statements and private behavior.

“Earlier this year, he cited the importance of protecting America’s technological secrets and beating China in the AI arms race as his entire rationale for why AI can’t and should not be regulated ever,” she said.

By that logic, Wallace said, Trump is “setting America up to be a great loser on the world stage, as he imperils U.S. national security in a matter that’s deeply entangled in his own bottom line.”

You can watch Wallace’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.

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