The u. S. Would be playing with fire if a great big nice is jerusalem as the capital of israel so i was referring to reports that President Trump could announce the policy change on wednesday those are the headlines the news continues in algiers a first its inside story. On counting the cost the golden locks oil price is there such a thing is the perfect price of crude for consumers and produces financial bubbles and big point plus the future of job creation in africa the only continent where the young outnumber the counting the cost at this time on aljazeera. Diplomatic chaos in just twenty four hours donald trump goes from threatening to destroy north korea to chipping away at the socalled special relationship with its closest ally the United Kingdom is u. S. Foreign policy now at a crossroads this is inside story. Below and a woman come to the program today with me peter dhabi Campaign Promises have been reset deadlines have been missed but the Trump Twitter bravado is a constant its been a week of tough talk and miscommunication mr trump first tag the wrong mrs may but still set the agenda his agenda this week donald trump promised to quote handle north korea and he eventually told the real mrs may the u. K. Prime minister to you and me to in effect do something to protect the u. K. Even after he had retreated fake news and as the white house does now they are repeating a central Foreign Policy idea moving one of their embassies and we shouldnt forget he began the week by claiming wrongly that Time Magazine was probably going to name him person of the year they werent all of this heat no light can be boiled down into what the russians say about u. S. Foreign policy and theyre not pulling any punches. One good thing impression that everything has been done on purpose to make shown through nap and carry out further inadvisable actions you do through credible the americans should explain to us what theyre after its well there have been constant mixed messages during these first ten months of the trumpet ministration the president and his secretary of state Rex Tillerson frequently broadcast seemingly contradictory policy positions the white house is denying reports trump plans to replace to listen soon when castle was blockaded six months ago by several countries led by saudi Arabia Tillerson called for talks and unity while trump appeared to back the saudis then theres the president shifting stance on the u. S. Embassy in israel during his Election Campaign mr trump promised to move from tel aviv to jerusalem only to shelve the idea once he was in the white house the latest reports however say hes changing his mind again and trump caused controversy in the u. K. By retreating fake anti muslim that he is british calls are increasing for his planned state visit to be cancelled nearly two million britons signed a petition against his visits and big protests are planned if trump does go to britain ok lets get going lets bring in our guests joining us here in the studio in doha josh on executive director of the arab center of washington d. C. And joining us from lancaster in the u. K. Richard johnson hes a lecturer in u. S. Politics at Lancaster University and a specialist on u. S. Foreign policy welcome to you both starting with you first the America First policy is it a good idea or a bad idea. It sounds like a good idea in principle but it depends what you mean by it and how you implement it the fact of the matter America First has always been its every countrys actually objective and Foreign Policy is to be first thats what we Call National interests every every country in the world pursues its own National Interest but when you behave if you will. As we have seen from this administration in washington where America First means basically addict at some countries or means. You know any particular countrys Foreign Policy is made in washington and simply implemented in that countrys capital that is not playing well in many countries. Particularly when the president reduces it to essentially his own personal agenda for the Administration Whether its arm sales or reversing certain economic measures that he feels unfair for for the United States that that gives if you will a new meaning to America First that we have no we have not seen before although the term is not new but johnson in lancaster is it wrong to break with established global custom and practice well i dont you know the issue is that America First is in some sense a slogan but it also speaks to a longstanding principle of Foreign Policy which is a realist position which is that countries pursue their own interests in the Foreign Policy space now where trump maybe new is that in his willingness to walk back from certain institutions that the United States has shaped in the trash and sphere particularly in the post World War Two era and so in that sense its not necessarily good or bad but it is disruption of. Established. Well politics and from the United States perspective that might make sense for the rest of us in the International Community means degree of readjustment and listening and watching quite closely to whats going on from the white house smashing the old is one thing but if you smash the old youve got to replace it with Something Else and there is a contradiction here because mr trump says were doing x. Y. Or said this is a settled Foreign Policy and then maybe ten or twelve weeks later we see people like Rex Tillerson rowing back and inverness seeing what might or might not come next so what are they replacing it with precisely replacing all policies sometimes is necessary but like you said you have to have a replacement for that particularly if youre not necessarily a two bit Banana Republic but a superpower that has National Interests all over the world that any statement by the president of that superpower registers nine point eight on the political director scale in most countries around the world so when you engage in Foreign Policy as a superpower in a vacuum in the sense that you do not have clarity to your vision clarity to your America First clarity to do what you want to to achieve whether its canonically strategically politically what have you that leaves a vacuum that leaves a lot of misunderstanding add to that the chaos that implied in the title of this program or this session. Cast that characterizes this administration in general and in particular into in terms of its Foreign Policy that is not a cause for comfort throughout most of the world richard is calles too strong a word because people who criticize Rex Tillerson say hes done or hes overseen two aspects to the not the states agreed Foreign Policy not the settled policy but the implementation of it they say hes done this point number one hes filleted the state department and he hasnt replaced people whove literally been got rid of him point number two across the middle east and asia there are still ambassadorial seats that are empty they have simply not appointed the personnel yet. Well Rex Tillerson is under a great deal of pressure at the moment not only from President Trump whos publicly disagreed disagreements with him but also from the Foreign Policy establishment for a different set of reasons which youve laid out citizen has been keen to pare down the state department to reduce the footprint of the state department and has offered things like. Sort of redundancy packages for people to leave the state department and so in some sense this is a cause of concern for people that the state department is having this smaller role in World Affairs but in another sense thats part of the the way in which the the Trump Administration is going which is that trumps proposed budget was to slash the state department and to put savings into defense and so in some sense to listen at least on that regard is following the president s wishes. Precisely the secretary of states main function is to follow the wishes of his president the head of the administration but at the same time what we have here is a very confused situation where where you have two issues here that are at stake one and we shouldnt mix the two i think its important for the audience to realize that on the one hand you have the main architect if you will an implementor of u. S. Foreign policy on behalf of the administration on the other hand you have another problem which is his performance at the state department and that too and in a way are totally separate and contradictory yes mr thomasson has not been a Success Story in terms of running the state department and that is surprising considering the fact that he was brought in for that specific purpose somebody with huge experience in the Corporate Community and he was supposed to trim down the bureaucracy and so on but on the other hes establishing force in this administration so the complaint the more serious i would say complaint in this regard is by removing him if indeed he is removed what you have is basically a removal of this step belies the tool or element within this administration that has given a bit of a legitimacy to take administration in terms of Foreign Policy weve now been joined by Charlie Wilson us political commentator and cohost of the podcast paul had to be american he was also formerly from the organization republicans a broad charlie wolf good to talk to you again part of the Success Story so far of America First. Well i think the fact that hes. Put changing the priorities i mean were again waiting from the front as opposed to leading from behind that these are the the Obama Administration this is someone that has no problems in projecting power as a use of preventing the use of power or the need hope we go to war you know hes standing up i think to north korea sure. It looks a bit scary at the present time if youre someone there watching from afar it it looks a bit. Different than what i think people are used to just catching the last bit of the last persons answer but i think again its a dramatic change in a Welcome Change from what weve heard from the last eight years how can you possibly see just interrupt each other without how can you possibly see hes changing policies his team his implement Implementation Team are actually super conventional youve got mr massas youve got master youve also got men you could thats kind of out with the old in with the old. Well maybe maybe a better phrase it is the presentation is going back to again with mr obama we had again for the sort of the lead from behind the apology tours this is someone who is very proud of what the country represents understands what the country represents its values etc and is happy to state them plainly and without any reservations may not sound as slick as mr obama but i think even just watching this last tour were its a bit unusual to see the president acting as a salesman with a tin and south korea talking about how many missiles hes going to die in their great missiles and you know again i know thats thats a totally foreign thing from those in the Foreign Policy. Sphere but again its a bit different a bit welcome so its ok in your mind if you have a u. S. President who apparently because if one reads the tweets this is what he does all the time he gloats over all the World Leaders problems he did it with terrorism a thirty six hours ago the u. K. Prime minister once you actually tagged the right to reason maybe he looked like he was gloating over a problem but statistically numerically analytically simply does not exist in the u. K. And then he retreats a fake video that was unreal but thats ok because that gets his message out there and then we have just learned from just charlie will please he then gets backed up by his press secretary who says well whether it was fake or not doesnt really matter because weve got the debate going. Well again he is getting the debate going in that is important hes going over the heads of the journalists who have been given the guy i think i dont want to say rough ride hes been giving them a very unfair ride in how theyre reporting stories now as far as these these tweets are concerned. These films far as i was concerned told a narrative and i think it is a very correct narrative it is someone who is in london there has been some problems with with terrorism here obviously. I think as far as mrs may is concerned he would she would have been far better i think to of very quietly picked up the phone and said excuse me donald did you know that this this group is not what you may think it is. A racist group and it would have been fixed but to embarrass the president that way hes going to respond i think its a natural thing that he does ok very briefly i just you know want to interrupt you again just to pick up on one point there how can you say again that hes been given a rough ride the man is on twitter and in Public Forums and habitual liar and if its about let me finish if its about separating the message from the delivery and the implementation of that message he shouldnt lie no its not lying i think whats happening here is you tell you having a press that is taking things literally is that seriously he does have a way of speaking in hyperbole and again i listen and i seem to know what the message is other people i know listen and they hear the right message and the press will sit there and nitpick over the words to say well technically what he said is x. Well thats not how people communicate i think most of us understand where hes coming from you put it on her you know is it hang on its not piper believe when he phones in radio talk shows in new york my names john im Donald Trumps p. R. Man it was obviously donald trump its not hyperbole its a lie when he says i saw people dancing he said wait a minute he said i saw people dancing on the rooftops in new york celebrating the events of nine eleven you cant see ground zero from trump tower he said his i had the biggest inauguration crowds of any u. S. President he didnt. First up im not going to worry about how big this the crowd was far as his inauguration is concerned but again im hearing the press picking up on trifling matter is when i think again it is a man who is dealing with much more important issues and you know again were not getting on the guys level and if we can be a listen we can play this game all day long if you want to be playing it for last year i dont think its accomplished anything because the press is ratings and with the Public Opinion ratings have gone down massively now his ratings arent so great but i think the difference is hes willing to do what he needs to do. Without worrying about ratings in the press or just not being trusted anymore you know and when i you know hear stories put up by the press when when everybody else seems to know exactly what hes talking about and you know hes not a great extemporaneous speaker hes not grown up in the political world but you know you can either play the game or you can try and report what is actually going on you know analyze stories here in the middle east is it better or worse Donald TrumpsForeign Policy i think any objective analyst of the situation in the middle east would tell you its a lot worse than it was before trump came on board and started fiddling. With his ideas with regards to middle east policy. Public opinion surveys and we have just ourselves at the arab center in washington conducted. Public opinion poll in. Eight different arab countries regarding mr trump and his policies although there are some pockets of support for him in certain out of countries that view that hes giving adequate attention to their concerns others or to the concerns of their government mostly related to arms sales but the rest of the arab world the majority have absolutely more than sixty some percent. Which by the way the numbers are similar to the United States his support is in the low thirtys and his opposition is in the mid sixtys so its not its universal its not just in the arab world its also in the United States its worse in europe its worse in the far east and you know his supporters including what you just heard a classic example defense by charlie saying that you know he fully sympathizes and understands where the man is coming from and he says its as if its a p called it a game its be our game its not a p. R. Game hes the president of a superpower a great power and you cant conduct the affairs of a superpower with massive interests throughout the world with tweets there has to be some substance to this policy which i think charlie just admitted he has he doesnt have the substance he articulate what he wants to do he says well i dont think the articulated well is and i live in washington two blocks from the white house and i still dont understand what this man once rich johnson and lancaster if they are about two in the dying days of Rex Tillerson being us secretary of state because there is a word coming out that says hell be gone by january probably his wife told him take the job he didnt want the job anyway what does it do to Foreign Policy across the middle east if they move the embassy because that cuts right to the nub of the Biggest Issue across the middle east well its been its been the position of the us congress in one thousand nine hundred five of course passed piece of legislation that bill clinton didnt sign but didnt veto and so became law nine hundred ninety five moving authorizing the movement of the u. S. Embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem now the law has a waiver in it which allows president s to defer the implementation of that policy for six months and every president since ninety ninety five including donald trump has done so as he did in june now there are many people in the administration who would like trump. Not to sign that waiver anymore and to move the embassy i think someone like the Vice President mike pence would be interested in doing that. But i think that trump has shown a degree of pragmatism on this particular issue and it remains to be seen how long he can push it into the long grass just on to on tellus and. You know it to lessons departure would be quite historically anomalous that the secretary of state position is quite a sticky one that very few secretaries of state leave due to disagreements with the administration that in all of American History only four have done so in two states they were over one over the civil war one over world war one and the last time we saw this in modern history was in one thousand nine hundred two when William HagueAlexander Haig left. As reagans secretary of state so the departure of tennis in would be really quite a dramatic move for in the recent history of sections of state kelly is there a sense in which perhaps is Foreign Policy implementation has been a plus in as much as a direct reaction not so much to his implementation of socalled Foreign Policy on his part but as a reaction to the fact of donald trump and how mass they were that far apart theyve got close together and theyve papered over the cracks a little bit they were supposed to sign the deal today thats been delayed or thats how they do it thats the lubricant of their relationship but theyve come closer together so the palestinians are closer together but they cant maybe deliver on something bigger than that. Thats the problem frankly they have gotten a little bit closer but not necessarily for american reasons the u. S. Salute leonora whatsoever to play in the recent between the and im asked its an internal challenge based on competition between. To. Knowledge meant on the part of hamas that it cannot continue to govern gaza and therefore it wants to dump the responsibility on the. A leadership in ramallah so on the contrary this is something thats about to explode in our face im not too optimistic that this is working what is important again and its not be are or whether we agree or disagree or whether we remain silent as the United States of america visit this Important Development in the region but where is the plan this president promised a plan when he was even running for office the plan is nowhere to be seen we do not know its detail he has an inefficient experienced team in place that keeps they keep leaking you know a few bits and pieces that do not seem to constitute a plan for peace in the middle east thats whats missing child level serious policy pardon me for interrupting charlie wolf i mean his his ratings among democrats understandably predictably they are so low they barely blip on the radar however amongst card carrying republicans his popularity percentages are running about eighty one eighty two percent if nothing bad happens to him say health wise over the next three years are we heading towards a second term donald trump a second term of this kind of Foreign Policy. Without a doubt we will because the first off if you look at the democratic side there is no leadership there is Hillary Clinton still think shes. The heir to the throne when she lost the election just as much as he won the election i dont see anybody coming up from the way things and quite frankly the way the American People are working again his is constituency is there is someone in there that speaks to them and for them and whether he gets his gender in in place that all this it bodes well for him if he doesnt get his agenda in place then the the people will essentially look towards the congress and say well thats the reason why so would never have it whatever way it is if the cookie crumbles oh really the coin falls it works in his favor you mentioned him on twitter about two minutes ago is there a sense in which for you hes actually exceptionally good at what he does he follows forty four people on twitter he has forty four million followers hes well known he gets up at five he tweets at six and by seven every internet you know youre laughing but its true by seven a. M. Washington time every International News channel around the planet is generating more words per word in per tweet than he came up with two hours before hand. This is becoming a fad i mean its a joke in a way instead of i mean i wish he would tweet policy i wish he would with tweet substance so that people can discuss u. S. Foreign policy and u. S. Interests as a result of his tweets instead of who is he attacking or who is insulting that that moment and this is a passing fad that is apt to blow up in his face sooner or later as charlie said he does have support unfortunately that support is continuing most probably he will be reelected their current circumstances but he is losing independents so that could be the defining if you will factor in the long term well maybe well have another seven years of President Trump to find out if he were finds his twitter skills or not gentlemen thank you very much for joining us here on inside story they were i guess josh on charlie wolf and Richard Johnson and thank you to you too for your company you can see the program again anytime you want on the website altidore dot com and for further discussion check out our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com forward slash a. J. Inside story and also join the conversation on twitter handle at a. J. Inside story or im at peace at all be one for me peace it up and everyone on the team here in doha thanks for watching well see very soon. The fact. More of this on the planet money. International team of scientists is determined no. Intervention. Of the big i would say here to a vast amounts of race against time to find the shoes i think its in the national favor. Techno this time on aljazeera. You are making great point even monks when theyre on line the main u. S. Response to drug use and the drug trade over the last fifty years has been to criminalize or if you join us on say you know you will first just makes up of it in the morning and says i want to cover the world in darkness this is a dialogue that could be what leading to some of the confusion online about people saying they dont actually know whats going on join the global conversation at this time on aljazeera. From the sun rule. This thing is a problem. Is the name under which a reporter a regular regular music is really going to trip a lot. Of very young news it may come from the maker but i feel that. The talks of are just quality talks often organism or cricket music has a message thats deeply relevant to this right especially for a good thing this is kind of all the right wing assault on our freedom to ask questions and generally all freedom of expression and people you know are being targeted like students teachers activists filmmakers writers they saw the been intimidated from the rest and people on the street see the protest has reached our doorstep sort of in whichever way id like to attempt to contradict something thats. An admission of guilt Donald Trumps former National Security adviser seeks a plea