the threat from north korea, in terms of their size of their army and where it s deployed is real. so i would like some of these exercises to continue to maintain the necessary skill set. let s not let it deteriorate, because that s what s happening. dana: the president is frustrated with the cost of these exercises. if you don t practice, you could ruin your investment altogether, i would imagine. it could cost you more in the end. yes. very much so. dana: i wanted to ask you about this. as i recall, the military likes it when diplomacy works. and when it comes to north korea, is it your position that we are in a better place than we were before because of these summits? oh, yeah, there s no doubt about that. clearly, missiles are not flying over our ally japan heading towards guam, as they were. we don t have the leader of north korea threatening to use icbm delivered weapons on the people of the united states. that is major change. i do think the president made
no one believes that the chairman is going to come in and hand over the keys to his nuclear program after one meeting. it will take a while not only to get him there but get into the verification programs and systems that have to follow. i think it s also important to remember. it wasn t two years ago the vice president. i was on board with him on our way to south korea at a time when we talked about rocket man. north korea launched a missile over japan. we have come a long way. this is a process and it will play out. look, i always hope that diplomacy works and so i m glad that we ve got an opportunity here. but what worries me is diplomacy without a strategy. we don t know what the president s strategy is but what we ve seen up until now it appears that it was escalate and capitulate. he escalated with some very incendiary rhetoric during the days of rocket man.
yes. i mean, yeah. we re less safe. i think does that mean tomorrow something bad is going to happen? hopefully not. but what it does mean is syria now is going to be given over to the russians, and they re emboldened. it s given to the iranians, assad is emboldened. isis is going to recruit a bunch of more people because they just va vain wished the united states of america. the president, it seems like just gave up. and with these rumors about afghanistan, it s unbelievable at a time when we re supposed to be negotiating with the taliban, that maybe he would signal withdrawal? anything you know about instruments of power and howdy ploem si wo diplomacy works, it doesn t work by removing the military threat, and in two days that was done. the rumors rand paul got in his ear and overruled his security team, there is going to be major
felt like the obama administration had dropped the ball. honestly, not on the world stage but domestically. back home as well. i think that if you look at this image and to give americans the choice between the president of the united states and elite diplomats sneering at him, americans will tell those diplomats were to shove it. shannon: it may prove his point and play to his base. about the issue of iran, we played what hassan rouhani had to play. essentially, rulers of the world thinks that they can do this better. the president tweets was, despite the request, i have no plans to meet hassan rouhani. it cracked me up, the choice of words. those two are not on the same page. they are not on the same page but this goes to the problem, the fact that he uses this to due to pharmacy to get things done, and that is not how diplomacy works. let me make this point very clear.
but this is a very soft rhetoric against north korea and a harsh rhetoric toward iran. the president saying he s willing to meet with iran s president, without any preconditions, this as we remind the world that the president pulled the world out of the iran deal. so how is this being received if you re in iran? i think there s, you know, there s confusion. the president pulled out of the iran nuclear deal, there s economic sanctions that are going to be reimposed in iran. and they re not sure, i think, what s going to come next, but there s no question, that iran was abiding by the obama administration s nuclear deal, u.n. inspectors agreed to that, but trump has thrown that out. so we see this sort of volatile and again i hope the president s diplomacy works, but it s a very