that s certainly been an argument that he s made not only about japan, but about the europeans. they don t care their weight in is that true? in the sense that we pay for most of the we bear a greater share of the cost than either one of them, certainly. our defense budget dwarfs just about everyone else s defense budget. and japan has renounced the use of nuclear weapons, and also, the use of force, except for self-defense. so it sort of fell to us after the war to provide that defense to us. and in they live in a fairly unstable part of the world with south korea and china. both of whom have a more contentious relationship with japan than we do. what do you make really quickly of the fact that shinzo abe was the first world leader to visit donald trump after the election? should we read too much into that? that s an interesting point, as i think you were saying earlier, he may be the first person to meet with both of them. right. and i would like to be a fly on the
attack, steve toomey. thank you very much for joining me today. there s so much history here, symbolism obviously not lot on either one of these gentleman. i m curious to get your thought ifs you think there will be a time when these two countries move beyond that attack and how it really changed the course of enthusiasmty, not just the war. i think it s important to remember that in many ways, these two countries had reconciled decades ago. they have been close political, military, and economic partners for years. but i think this is a really important symbolic visit, and probably more for the japanese people than it is for us. and why so? i think a lot of young japanese don t really understand how the war began. and the circumstances under which this attack occurred. and i think they probably don t know what that great tragedy this attack was for japan. it was the opening of war they couldn t possibly win and they kn it. but they went ahead and attacked anyway. and the result
won a third term. do you groo wiagree with that? i think he would have that, but i wouldn t have said that. you always get in trouble answering hypothetical questions. did you see that as a dig on hillary clinton? as a swipe against her? i think that was just obama being obama. none of us are perfect and we all have a sense of ourselves and he has a sense of himself. and it was david axelrod asking the question, so it was his friend. that s when he should have been on guard for and just passed on that. that would have been the smarter thing to do. your take, rick? that s right, when you re talking to friends, you tend to let your guard down. but barack obama might have won if he had focused on those three states, michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania. hillary clinton playing barack obama wasn t going to win. very quickly, i want to talk about this poll. there s a new poll out from pew research that shows that president obama will end his presidency really on a high note. 45
actually, since his own peace proposals collapsed. and i think this has been burning to come out for quite some time. all right. our chief foreign affairs correspondent, andrea mitchell, with some breaking news there on u.s. secretary of state, john kerry s, anticipated speech tomorrow, where he is expected to, essentially, counter the accusations that are being leveled against the obama administration, that it was somehow behind the united nations resolution condemning israeli settlements. andrea, thank you very much. excuse me. now to some other political headlines, starting with new questions about just how serious donald trump is about his pledge to drain the swamp. it s a phrase he started using in the final weeks of his campaign, and repeated after the election. he was going to take aim at corruption in washington, fight off the big donors, he said, tune out the lobbyists. now new questions about whether he s following through. politico reports that more than a third of the p
simply walk back. how can the obama administration, do you think, make it difficult for president trump, in the future, to do that? well, that s partly why the administration is undertaking a review of the events of this election season, which will be in a report to president obama, some of which will hopefully be public. and there s great pressure on the president and the administration from members of congress in both parties to make to conduct an investigation and to make the review public. in fact, members of congress also want to conduct their own investigation to really air the allegations and to show the public what they believe has been just unconscionable actions by russia in this election. ellen nakashima, great to have you with us. thank you very much for that reporting. i m sure it s going to get a lot