allies have to adjust to this incredibly unconventional and unpresidential politician. most of his impulses are going unchecked. there s very few people around him who could stand up to him and say you should do this differently. there has yet to be that person in the room. james mattis, defense secretary, has at times been able to soften him or convince him. we know a year ago when they were talking about what to do in afghanistan, there was a grouping of tillerson and mattis and others who were able to convince the president to change his mind and maintain a true presence there. those moments don t happen very often. this is a president who is going to more times than not not just go with what he wants to but do it in the most extreme way possible. it s a crass move that really would have been unthinkable under a previous president. it s almost a debus statiasing
and the degree to which he has asundered the alliances that are so essential to this country, does he make a move? we don t know. but the world got a lot more more dangerous today because of the incompetence of this president whose only foreign policy philosophy seems to be to nullify the obama presidency. if barack obama was for it, he s against it. and he s against it even if it means he makes american national security weaker. peter, on the role that pompeo played, you write on friday mr. pompeo called his counterparts in europe to tell them that mr. trump was planning to withdraw but that he was trying to win a two week reprieve for the united states and europe to continue negotiating. mr. pompeo suggested that he favored a so-called soft withdrawal in which trump would pull out of the deal but hold off on reimposing some of the sanctions. this has to go down as pompeo s
the president does at that juncture. pompeo at his confirmation hearing said that iran still was adhering to the deal, and yet the united states pulled out anyway. that was just a couple weeks ago. that is one of the things we re going to ask former secretary of state john kerry, who joins us now by phone. your reaction to the announcement of a full withdrawal from the iran deal that you and president obama i believe would describe as one of the most significant foreign policy achievements of the obama presidency. it s not a question of it being an achievement of obama s presidency or my tenure as secretary. it s an agreement by which the international community, seven countries, entered into an agreement which was ratified by the security council of the united nations, which is accepted under international law as an agreement to prevent iran
materially false. what a competent and responsible president would have done and i understand that there are many people who think that the deal did not go far enough. it didn t include the iranian s ballistic missile program, it didn t include iran s export and funding of terror in the destabilization of the middle east. i think those are legitimate criticisms. a competent president would have said i don t like this deal, i have my eyes on the iranians. we re going to be insistent that there be tough verification and enforcement. there s no problem with this. but he has isolated the united states. of course, every time he goes to europe and he equivocates on our obligations under the article 5 provisions of nato, he sends a message to vladimir putin to go ahead,test us, make a move in the baltics. vladimir putin, if he s feeling gutsy on any day, looking at this president s equivocations
believed. that s absolutely untrue. he knows it. this is special concern because the president of the united states has a demonstrated history of having trouble with the truth. bill clinton sat down and met with the special prosecutor and he ran into a host of problems in that situation, but he was willing to sit down and do it. it s not implicitly a perjury trial every time a subject, target, whatever you want to call the president at this point, sits down with prosecutors. every other employee in the federal government, if i has an assistant u.s. attorney had ever refused to sit down and talk to investigators, i would have been fired. there s no reason the plt can t president can t be held to that same standard. you and i worked in a white house under investigation, the valerie plame investigation.