us. the president composed weekends, slamming the russia probe, the aides on tv says everything is honky dori. what s the mixed messages of the political messages? the president is clearly frustrated with the russia probe and the speed with which it s been progressing. but that doesn t mean he s going to fire rod rosenstein or fire bob mueller. i think he said all along that the white house is cooperating, turned over 1.4 million documents, they have done everything they can to cooperate to bring it to conclusion. certainly unending by firing those two probably prolong it further and i think the president probably recognized that and i don t think he has any plans of firing either of the two. so you have no doubt that rod rosenstein, sessions, mueller, they re all safe? i would think that they are. i think the white house wants
the world is looking at him. and is wondering what he s saying. and so, i don t thwart him for having, you know you have to signal in some way, are you going to respond to this? react to this? is that the mistake, of course, was all of that criticism that he was heaping, piling on barack obama, which really misunderstood the nature of the presidency. of course, the president has to have some reaction when these things happen. he could have had a frankly, he could have had a more guarded reaction, the kind that obama or bush would have had, which gives you more options. in fact, whatever his press secretary says, he doesn t have any option at this point. he has said he s going to respond. and with smart weapons. chairman rogers, defense secretary mattis said today that the u.s. and key allies are still working on options to respond and have not even definitively concluded who is behind the attacks. how risky is it, then, for the president to make a statement like that? or was it
the trump white house does any scenario planning before they announce something or before the president tweets something. chairman rogers, white house spokesman sarah sanders kind of danced around the president s comments, saying just pause the president laid out one option, doesn t mean he s looking or not looking at other options, including diplomacy. to fareed s point, does there need to be a clear strategy communicated in any type of reaction? completely. and if this were part of some grand strategy that maybe those of us who are in the used to do a lot of the national security work don t understand, that s great. but you need to articulate it. or at least demonstrate it. and when you have the secretary of defense who s in a different position saying, well, wait a minute, we haven t even worked out the issues with our allies yet. and by the way, if you re going to be successful at this, you have to have our allies engaged in whatever decision, even if the president decided, i
this is all predictable, if somebody just had a national security council meeting and had this five or six people around saying, okay, if we were to do this, what would likely happen? so then you don t do that. so it seems as though nobody in the trump white house does any scenario planning before they announce something or before the president tweets something. chairman rogers, white house spokesman sarah sanders kind of danced around the president s comments, saying just pause the president laid out one option, doesn t mean he s looking or not looking at other options, including diplomacy. to fareed s point, does there need to be a clear strategy communicated in any type of reaction? completely. and if this were part of some grand strategy that maybe those of us who are in the used to do a lot of the national security work don t understand, that s great. but you need to articulate it. or at least demonstrate it. and when you have the secretary of defense who s in a different po
so you do have to kind of let people in on what your reaction, what your strategy is. that s what i it s not because people are so stupid that they haven t thought about the fact, oh, there would be an element of surprise. you know, you have to balance this. and i think what s happening in a strange way is, trump realizes the world is looking at him. and is wondering what he s saying. and so, i don t thwart him for having, you know you have to signal in some way, are you going to respond to this? react to this? is that the mistake, of course, was all of that criticism that he was heaping, piling on barack obama, which really misunderstood the nature of the presidency. of course, the president has to have some reaction when these things happen. he could have had a frankly, he could have had a more guarded reaction, the kind that obama or bush would have had, which gives you more options. in fact, whatever his press secretary says, he doesn t have any option at this point. he has s