you can see the slight movement, perhaps, toward re-engagement of the old soviet union, the election tampering, put that aside for a moment. is there ever going to be a solution in syria without russia and the united states coming to some understanding, whether it is part of a grand plan or grand bargain involving not expanding nato or the ukraine or peeling i ran out of the situation. a lot of smart people have written about this. it is difficult to see how this ends with just the united states getting involved, more military strikes, without putin coming to that conclusion that tillotson referenced. how is this good in rush s long-term interests. the fact that he said that, i have my concerns about getting mired in the middle east again. i thought that was smart the way he phrased that. i was heartened. bret: there is this parsing of words about regime change and
unhappy, but the establishment is breathing a bit easier. jerry joins us now. he s the executive washington editor for the wall street journal. there were so many concerns in the u.s. senate when rex tillerson was chosen to be his nominee of secretary of state. they said you won this award from vladimir putin, you re going to cozy up to him. now he s headed to russia and putin isn t even going to meet with him. is that an exhibit of what you re talking about? ironically, rex tillerson has been tougher on russia than anybody else in the last few days. it s one of the ways in which the governing trump style is different than the campaigning trump style suggested. there was not only chumminess of russia, a fear on some people s part of kind of a neoisolationist trend. retreating from the world. we re going to focus on our own problems. what you have instead and you saw this in the syria strike last week, a willingness to get
attack civilians. well, he obviously tried to clarify that and went so far as to issue a statement. just so you get a sense of what sean spicer is saying about this, and what he is really saying at this point is, look, in no way it was i trying to lessen the tremendous nature of the holocaust. i was trying to draw a distinction of the tactic of using airplanes dropped chemical weapons on population centers. any attack on innocent people is inexcusable. it seems like he is trying to watch this back because of a sort of gap, if you will. this is gonna mount social media, the anne frank s letter calling for his resignation as is the house minority leader, nancy pelosi. but my sources tell me, he s not going anywhere. i better not. kevin corke five on the north lawn. president trump says he is essentially claiming a president obama s mess in syria. the president spoke with fox business networks
action. he has come support in syria. people feel that was the right move. bret: obviously he feels emboldened by that reaction. you also asked about domestic priorities. here is a sound bite about going after health care may be reform. we are going to have a phenomenal tax reform, but i have to do health care first. i want to do it first to really do it right. do you have to do health care before tax reform? yes. if you don t do that, you can t but the savings into the tax cuts. have you moved off of this deadline of august to get this done? are you looking at a later on the air? i don t want to put deadlines. health care is going to happen. if it doesn t happen fast enough, i ll start the taxes, but the t tax cuts are better if i can do health care first. so when do you sense that he is emboldened by what he is hearing from capitol hill team that
does donald trump really want the endorsements of these senators who had originally, earlier abandoned him? look, you saw him earlier today. he ll take support wherever he can get it. the more unified we are as a republican party, great. the more independents and soft democrats we can pick up. but at this point, he understands that most americans right now are looking for change. there s a huge contrast between his message of change and 30 years of hillary clinton s message of status quo. he laid out an agenda for his first 100 days. but more than anything hillary clinton has tried to sell donald trump as the risky choice. but he has the record of risk eight now, whether it s the failed russia reset, her actions in libya, syria, her handling of classified information. over and over again, when given the opportunity to make tough choices, hillary clinton has proven that she s had the risky choice, the failed choice.