and the white house claims that the threat of new sanctions is acting as a determent. joining us now from washington is white house reporter for the washington examiner sarah westwood. good to talk to you. let s begin with the late either departu departure, gary cohn. the president addressing the high turnover rate in the white house saying that he likes conflict, he likes different points of view. what do you make of cohn s departure from the white house, what are you hearing? i m hearing from some of trump s populist allies the type of people who were potentially on the campaign didn t make it into the white house or continue to advise the president from the outside who are cheering cohn s departure, they always considered him a globalist, part of the group of aides who were not necessarily committed to the trump agenda. but if you are a free trader, if you are associated with the wing of the republican party that is resisting president trump s
we do believe in our system of justice are not an investigation should not, like i said, determent and outcome come because they wanted it to be one the side of the clintons. the justice department and fbi were ruined under president obama, attorney general lynch, and james comey. there is no doubt on that. compare and contrast how they handle the dossier last year with uranium one and the pay to play allegations of the clinton foundation. that reportedly according to fox news, andrew mccabe talked about how the fbi works so hard to verify that dossier and run us all down. they couldn t verify it but they work harder and pursuing it. now what s going on with the uranium one allegations, fbi agents are seeking information to get subpoena so they can pursue leads and they are being told, no. you have suppression of a clinton investigation on yet another matter. with this over-the-top attack this is what the dossier was. a clinton attack, a clinton campaign funded attack on
conflict. and when we look at what is happening right notice and the approach that this president is taking, what we are seeing is he walks the walk, talks the talk, or kind of has strategic deterrence in his choice of words. and think we should be very he concerned about north korea and how they have gone over this past several decades thinking that they have the right to move forward with the uranium enrichment, plutonium as they developed a nuclear warhead. now, congresswoman, i want to get your take on this because at one point president trump was mocked for saying that some of our allies in part of the world, japan and south korea, should have access to nuclear weapons that that would be a determent for any kind of aggression
well, i would suggest that we hold talks with north korea. and i ve suggested this in the past because this is a logical way forward. those talks have to be held without the pre-condition that has been put on them that you have to give up your nuclear programs and then we ll talk to you. that is not realistic. that this is their guarantee of survival. and so what the north korean regime has to understand, okay, so you have a nuclear weapon with a missile. new behave yourself and be a normal country. and stop threatening people and you don t have to worry about the united states threatening you. and it may lead to a series of agreements in which that we could stabilize northeast asia and still keep the u.s. determent in place in japan and south korea. but we also have to understand that it s in china and russia s interests to lever the united states out of south korea and ultimately away from our relationship with japan. so this will be a very difficult
japanese or threaten the u.s. armed forces? they don t want to see a u.s. preemptive strike on north korea either with 70 nuclear weapons. so the only good thing that we can do in the short run is massively invest in ballistic missile defense. that is not enough. and then i think privately we ll have to tell him, look, if you people look like you re on the verge of a first strike, then we ll preempt you. and that has to be a credible determent step. are you surprised at the speed with which we ve gotten to this particular milestone? well, i think all along when we find a situation that has no good options, we try and deny it exists. the elephant in the living room kind of thing. and i think all along we ve discounted the fact that this primitive isolated nation could develop the technology to go nuke.