chance work with megan know how tight his bond is, not with just her but all of his children. and import part of his legacy was that he was a national security hawk. a defense hawk. it s important to point out he was not a warmonger. far from it. he spent a lot of time advocating for better support and services for service members, veterans and their families. he had a healthy appreciation, especially later on in with his tenure in the senate for the limits to the use of military force. i think about afghanistan and he lobby president obama hard for increased troop presence in afghanistan. he was the first guy on the senate floor to say look, america is never going to secure all of its interest in the country with the use of military force alone. he is unique in that. he has worked on both sides of the issue as a servicemember and in policy, there s no one else like that.
days in the obama administration and the national security council legislative affairs that. i used to have to take my boss at the time, national security adviser jim jones over to the white house to brief senator mccain on then-president obama s foreign policies. he was always very candid with this thought. shocking there was no tip toeing around disagreements. there was no mincing words. his candidates for something people appreciated about him. fair to say he was candid in a sense his thoughts were country s first-ever politics first when it came to foreign policy. country first and also the men and women in uniform over and above politicians. you know, people like to talk about how he was the defense hawk, national security hawk and he was. but he was not a reckless advocate for foreign intervention. quite the contrary.
circumstances are for the military if the deal doesn t get done. he wasn t always a defense hawk. the moderator said in all his 30 years in the defense world, it was the first time he had seen a speaker of the house make this kind of plea for defense spending. the defense budget is being held hostage for daca, which is not a deadline that expires tomorrow. good faith negotiations are underway right now but we should not be be holding hostage the military for this. congress is likely to pass another short term spending bill to fund the government but that doesn t get the military its desperately needed new jets and repairs to ships will be slowed, melissa. melissa: thank you. jon: meantime the house intelligence committee hearing from former f.b.i. director james comey s chief of staff with the focus on the hillary clinton email scandal and the drafting of that exoneration memo. what lawmakers are learning.
take a listen. do you have the votes? i don t know. we just you know, we re kind of figuring out what we re doing as of last night. we re hearing the plan. i guess our friends at the freedom club decided they wanted to oppose this. so we ll see. but you know, i ultimately think we re going to get through. i m a little less optimistic this time than i was, say, december 23rd. that s not what i m hearing from the freedom club, our friends over there. i don t know what their reasoning is because they re not the ones that have been advocating for robust military spending. in fact, many of them in the freedom caucus were frans of sequester, which i am not. he actually got to freedom caucus at the end after two scornful freedom clubs. explain this big divide within the republican family. yeah, when he answered that question about are they going to be able to pass this with republican votes, he seemed a little annoyed himself. he s a defense hawk. republicans on the hill are not hap
background. he spent a lot of time in the federal government and he knows a lot of people. joe lieberman, by the way, 75 years old. so he would be sort of up there in terms of age as far as the history of fbi directors go. but i think that the president likes him because he was a democrat, he s an independent. he s a defense hawk. he s tough on law enforcement. i think a lot of democrats probably see joe lieberman as much of the republican ideology than they do the actual democratic ideology, though he continued to caucus with the democratic party after going independent. we do not know in the president will make the announcement before he leaves for saudi arabia. with the president saying that he s close, it s probably safe to say if he s not made a decision, he s on the cut cusp of it soon. shepard: breaking news. lindsey graham speaking live.