nuclear arms agreement saying russia has been breaking the rules of that treaty for a while. russia has jeopardized the united states security interest and we can no longer be restrict bid the treaty while russia violates it. joining us know, msnbc nuclear security analyst a. geoff bennett, let me start with you. this is a significant policy move. not a surprising one. we ve known this is coming. but today the trump administration is in effect pulling the trigger. you re right about that. this is the headline. you have the world s two greatest nuclear powers set to pull out of this crucial grae agreement, the inf treaty. inf stands for intermediate range nuclear forces treaty, and the name explains what it does. the agreement requires the destruction of any land-based cruise missile that can strike within roughly 300 to 3500
withdrawal process will last six months starting tomorrow. and the process could be reversed if russia comes back into compliance. geoff bennett, see you in a little bit over at the white house. the president is set to depart for mar-a-lago later this morning. joe, do you think on this topic of whether or not this could trigger a new arms race, is that your sense of where this is going? it is. when someone breaks the law, you don t repeal the law. there s no question in my mind that russia is in violation of this treaty, but having donald trump pull out of ronald reagan s treaty doesn t fix that vit violation. this is a gift to vladimir putin as it was said in the previous show. this is something that we moves the restraints from vladimir putin. now we can deploy as many weapons as he wants wherever he wants and the u.s. is going to be constrained in any kind of response to this.
father-in-law the president declares it s not witness tampering at all. joining me now geoff bennett at the white house. here with me at the table, peter baker. amy stoddard and aaron blake. peter, let me start with you. so interview with the president. this came together interestingly. he called your paper s publisher and said have dinner off the record. your publisher went how about an on the record. a publisher who wanted journalism. and president trump invited us into the oval office. we spent about an hour and a half with him yesterday. there s been a question about this senior official who was directed on the campaign to talk with roger stone about wikileaks as we explained. i want to start there with you. the president said fairly definitively to you he never directed anybody to reach out on wikileaks. he said he didn t talk to