Right now. Its not an order, the president s opinion. Are President Trumps tweets considered official white house statements . The president is the president of the United States, theyre considered official statements by the president of the United States. Wow. Good morning. And welcome to morning joe. Im confused. So confused. What is that line from the office . Universe, you win. Its thursday, august 2nd. And what a way to start the day. What a way. So, is it the official policy of the president or not . I think the most telling thing of the whole story is how much his lawyers freaked out immediately and started calling around immediately. He was just venting. Just like a baseball game. When hes actually doing what talking about what would start a constitutional crisis. Or Obstruction Of Justice. As brian clause pointed out yesterday is exactly what he did in turkey back 2013, 2014. Talk about fake news. You talk about deep state conspiracies. You fire prosecutors and you have a were
planes around. poland s president has said his country would not send planes to ukraine, because it might be seen as interfering in the war. and vladimir putin has signaled that such a move would be seen as direct involvement. meanwhile, the u.s. and nato allies are working quickly to arm ukraine in other ways. the new york times reporting more than 17,000 anti-tank weapons have made their way into the country through poland and romania. so far, supply lines have not been interrupted because russian forces have been focused elsewhere. officials also said that u.s. cyber mission teams are in place around eastern europe, in an effort to disrupt russia s communications and any potential cyber attacks. joining us now, professor of global politics at the university college london brian clause, a columnist for the washington pope and the host of the power corrupts podcast. great to see you this morning. thanks for joining us. let s start there. how much of a setback is it for ukraine
if it is an existential threat for our country, it can be used in accordance with our concept. joining me now is brian clause, professor of global politics at university college london. professor, great to have you on. it s part of russian doctrine, and we all thought it to mean if the russian homeland was invaded, part is the use of nuclear weapons. now, the perception, how has it changed? if we are talking about an existential threat to vladimir putin, what does he see as an existential threat now? . well, it s not very surprising they re not ruling out the use of nuclear weapons. we would expect that to be the case. and i think it s one of those areas where we have to understand russia s place in the world and how it is shifting very, very quickly. before this invasion, russia s economy was sandwiched between italy and mexico in terms of its size.
as brian clause pointed out yesterday is exactly what he did in turkey back 2013, 2014. talk about fake news. you talk about deep state conspiracies. you fire prosecutors and you have a we re getting close. with us we have mike barnicle and jonathan lamir and former fbi special agent and contributor clint watts and national political reporter heidi. i say we are getting close and that may sound like an overstatement, but we re understating what we are seeing every day. ask someone like madeline albright whether what she sees here is the beginning of a very bad scene for this country that does not look like a democracy. a bad scene for a country, willie, if you don t have people pushing back. we talked about the commander
oligarchic thug-like countries that do not share our values. you see that manifest income ways small and big in the way journalists are being treated in other countries. i represent journalists without borders, freeing journalists imprisoned overseas, they see that pressure is not from from the united states of america. nobody is there. you see the impact, donald trump attacks cnn international and then a couple days later saudi arabia attacks cnn int international and you see what s happening, i tried to explain this on twitter. you can t, people are just anyway because they say. because it s a sewer. but china is becoming even less quote democratic. there were moves towards market reforms. there were moves towards political reforms. that s all changed. so the world really, brian