of things that people think are important in terms of reform. now, that said, many of these steps in biden s plan would undo things that joe biden did. joe biden wants to get rid of his mandatory minimums and his crack and powder cocaine distinction. he says i m going to background call, one often his advisers was saying that he wants to get back to the police investigations that were spearheaded by legislation that joe biden pushed. that was the crime bill. and so joe biden does have a really difficult here. i also think it s going to be interesting in terms of how this plays out. joe biden s record versus what he s talking about now and there s going to be fascinating points. joe biden is far more progressive than democrats would have been just a cycle or two ago, but probably wouldn t even be close to the most progressive earn. this is such important policy and substance. let s talk about what s driving
substancive things the president plans to accomplish? an official told us we should expect substance, substantive things but never laid out was it on trade, north korea, reaif firming the relationship? so they do have these calls but there s not actually a lot of specifics they want to preview or layout. one of the things i doubt was on the background call was reuping an insult the president can t quick, that was about john mccain. i didn t know about it, somebody said it happened, they re painting the ship. i have no idea if it happened or not. i hear it s fake news. but maybe it is, maybe it isn t. but again, i don t talk about john mccain unless somebody asks me about him. it happened, and it s disturbing on many levels not the least of which is the fact
some way he ll make a statement, give an interview, send a tweet that will lead to an area of diplomatic clean up or news in ways they weren t expecting. so they go in prepared for that, in as much as you can t prepare for how it s going to happen or what s going to go on. in the bush presidency, there was a backgrounder with the national security advisor, sometimes the secretary of state and sometimes experts from the state department, did they have objectives, do they do those for these trips for you guys? do they have objectives when they go overseas or is it just to pray against diplomatic mayhem? i will say for a lot of these trips there often is a background call with reporters where you can ask questions and they go over some of their objectives. but for instance on the japan trip we specifically asked, what are the deliverables, the
feel them. we should look ahead to, what s going to happen? are all u.s. troops going to pull out of syria? already we re hearing probably not. that s not what the pentagon is trying to do. that may have been the tweet but there was a background call at the white house and they re all saying the right very cautious things that there already was a plan. the president has wanted to pull people out. you know, some people think you could lower the troop levels a little in the north and that would placate some of turkey s concerns while still ensuring u.s. interests. no one is talking about pulling the troops where the real fighting is going on in southern jair. those troops down there and in the rest of the country are what s keeping the lid on isis. not just the active fighters but the ones that are people are afraid will come out of the woodwork in places like raqqah which is supposed to be a huge success story. it s the one area in the world where everything has gone right, meaning th
that the cdp officials said that when they were in the what is called the bounds forward operating base down there on the southwest border after being apprehended with the group of 163 people, they won t tell us that water, had request it. there s details we don t know and they re looking into this. another big question, commissioner of cpb testified on the hill on tuesday and he talked about the fact that this was a system, that is system, this border enforcement system for young men coming across and not equipped for families and young children to be coming across in ways like this. at that time on tuesday, this young girl had already died in custody. he made no mention of that. on this background call, dhs would not acknowledge, would not answer, would not say if they knew if the commissioner knew about the death at this time but