Chris Spyrou

cabinet officials in descending order of when their departments were actually created by Congress.

So it actually has nothing to do with the –

theoretical importance of one cabinet versus another.

So in fact, you actually have the Secretary of Agriculture much higher in that presidential line of succession than the Secretary of Homeland Security.

So what we know from this weekend is that actually the highest ranking person who

who was in the presidential line of succession, who was not attending the White House Correspondents' Dinner where that incident occurred, was the president pro tem of the U.S.

Senate, Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa.

So the president pro tem is actually the oldest, longest-ranking, longest-serving U.S.

senator of the majority party

So in many cases, that president pro tem is not someone who is particularly spry, particularly with it, or even all that politically important in the U.S.

system by the time they reach that president pro tem status.

In all of this, I know that questions were put to Caroline Leavitt whether or not the designated survivor protocol was enacted or was discussed in the lead up to that White House dinner, given that there were so many high profile members of the Trump administration part of it.

And she said that it kind of was a discussion, but they didn't really have to do much about it because there were a lot of cabinet members that weren't at that dinner anyway.

Just generally, though, what can you tell us about the designated survivor protocol?

I mean, some of us might have seen it on a particular Netflix series, but where does it come from and how seriously does the government take it day to day?

The designated survivor system dates back to the...

sort of late Jimmy Carter, early Ronald Reagan presidencies at the height of the Cold War, when there was a real threat of global thermonuclear war between the U.S.

and the Soviet Union that could unfold in a period of just 30 minutes or less.

And so during particularly high-profile events,

Normally, it's really only the presidential state of the union and presidential inaugurations.