the look? it feels a lot like he is backing kim jong-un into a corner giving him a choice between submission or war. and given the psychology of the north koreans, it seems like it s ratcheting up the possibility of war. i watched rob portman on your air a few minutes ago, a thoughtful republican. it was interesting because on the one hand he was supporting the president. uh-huh. and suggesting that this pressure could be helpful. but then he spent many, many minutes talking about all the tools, diplomatic tools, in the toolbox that should be exercised in the service of trying to solve this problem. and the question is the president thinking about all these things? what is the end game here? or is it just to him another tv show? it s very hard to know. you heard what congressman swalwell said, which to his constituents he s a democrat and he s telling them to comfort them in a way that there are
driving the situation on the korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war, donald trump has said this morning on twitter, military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded. he does say should north korea act unwisely. so he is saying essentially this would be a reaction to something north korea does. does that give you any comfort in what you expect about how this will play out? no, no, i have no comfort in the way that the president is conducting foreign and military policy, brianna. mind you he s doing this from a golf club in new jersey. he would be well served to go back to the white house to assemble his team to talk to our allies. we re going to need a lot of allies if we re going to engage in a military conduct with north korea. and also continue to engage with china. you know, this policy is also very inconsistent from what i thought was a foreign policy success over the weekend where in a 5-0 vote tougher sanctions
we cannot just sit back and have the typical kind of rhetoric and preparations and policies that we ve had in the past. washington may be very comfortable with those. they like the status quo, they may freak out when it comes to somebody doing something new. but what washington has to understand is the last 20 years this policy has failed. richard may not have heard what i said because i agree with him on the fact that donald trump what i didn t hear is you finish the locked and loaded part. you keep saying locked and loaded, but you re forgetting the major part which is if north korea should act unwisely. right. that s a key point. i don t disagree at all. i just think that you re well, then say it. do you want me to read the tweet? i don t have it in front of me. no, i want you to stop saying locked and loaded without finishing the rest of it because you re being very political with a serious policy.
base that is core trump support. and so, you know, there i think he s scoring some points. in a practical way though you look at mitch mcconnell, brianna s covered the hill, she knows, there s not a wilier character on capitol hill, and he actually has quite a bit of support among his own caucus. and there are a thousand ways in which he can be either helpful or hurtful to the president, many of which we ll never see that go to arcane procedural matters. so if you want to get your program across then it seems to me going to war with mcconnell is sort of mystifying in a way in the same way going straight ahead at kim jong-un leaves you with some questions. you know, this is donald trump, man. he doesn t have brakes on the truck. it s just going straightforward and there s no reverse on the gear shift either. we ll see if there s a cliff ahead. david axelrod, thank you so
so one hopes that at the end of the day that the group is making decisions and that the president isn t going to improvise or continue to improvise. but, you know, that s an open question. and there had been speculation that general kelly was going to monitor the twitter. i can t believe that that s going on given the productivity the president has had on twitter since then. let me get your take on something else, ax, while we have you. the president goes after mitch mcconnell, makes it public, makes it obvious. brianna pointed out earlier that he s retweeting articles on his feed that are negative about mcconnell. and i think we ve heard a surprising number of republicans say, well, maybe mcconnell should go. if he doesn t get it done, the president s right, he s got high ground here, repeal and replace was the signature move. they got the numbers on the basis of it in large part and they didn t deliver. does the president win on this one? well, i think it plays very well with his