meanwhile secretary of state rex tillerson was at a foreign ministers where he asked a question that left his colleagues befuddled. quote, why should u.s. taxpayers be interested in ukraine? i m joined by colonel wilkerson. colonel, let s start with the hitler comment, which we don t have to talk about the sort of trajectory of the historical clumsiness and apology. but, to me, what was striking is that this was pretty clearly a talking point. the president himself in interviews talking about the worst mass murderers haven t used chemical weapons in this way, which is the kind of rhetoric you normally association with justifications for escalation into a military conflict. i m very concerned by that very aspect of it. let me just say that i think scott spicer is kept around because he makes donald trump look good. i wouldn t expect him to depart on that basis alone. the white house is looking so bad that scott spicer actually
charge of the strategy. i really don t see coherence yet. colonel lawrence wilkerson, thank you. thank you. joining me now, katrina vander hooven, and former congressman david jolly. katrina, you know, there s this line that eric trump said, and i ve now seen conservatives repeat it, which is, well, look, the syria strike proves that trump is not tied or overly sympathetic to russia. and one wonders whether they now perceive that there s political upside in increasing escalation with russia as a sort of means of producing some sort of domestic political effect with regards to the ongoing investigation there. let me flip that if i could. colonel wilkerson made a very important point about the importance of the 2013 diplomatic agreement to dismantle chemical weapons in syria, chris. you ve been tweeting about that. i think it s important because president obama spoke of the playbook in washington among the
and, again, this real sense that the foreign policy of this government is essentially up for grabs for whoever sort of moves first or most strongly in the public eye. and what that means for other states that are attempting to make strategic judgments about how to interact with us. it means that they re terribly confused, including our most prominent allies in the world. we don t know. they don t know exactly what s going to happen at any given time. i remember very vividly how this happened with the bush administration in the first term when dick cheney was more or less running everything, and no one knew what was going to come out until dick had made up his mind. this was very disconcerting for our allies. well, at least mr. cheney was competent, experienced, and an extremely good bureau craft. this is amateurism, and amateurism looks to the world just like what it is amateurism. colonel, do you think that there s any danger now of
sympathetic to russia. and one wonders whether they now perceive that there s political upside in increasing escalation with russia as a sort of means of producing some sort of domestic political effect with regards to the ongoing investigation there. let me flip that if i could. colonel wilkerson made a very important point about the importance of the 2013 diplomatic agreement to dismantle chemical weapons in syria, chris. you ve been tweeting about that. i think it s important because president obama spoke of the playbook in washington among the foreign policy establishment. that playbook assigns credibility to use of military force. president obama pushed back against a discredited foreign policy establishment. but now that diplomatic agreement is being castigated, dismissed, by even obama supporters. i think it s unhealthy. i think lawrence wilkerson also made a good point that what was the rush? we ve seen horrific, heinous chemical weapons attacks in syria before. why not an in
those attacks? why not a present to congress or the united nations? in terms of russia let me stop you there because lawrence wilkerson said this. i have seen people calling into the question whether the chemical weapons were in fact from the assad regime. afp was on the scene fairly quickly after the first reporters that i saw get there who had pretty consistent eyewitness accounts of an airplane flying over. i m saying there should have been an independent investigation before the rush because what you re witnessing is and put aside what the trump sons are saying. i do think there could have been a targeting of domestic critics. what we re faced with tonight is that we are probably closer to war than we have been since the cuban missile crisis. the prime minister, who is the most pro-western in that putin government, said after the syrian strikes, we are on the verge of military clashes. i think this country needs to wake up. we re talking about sean spicer