all right. bob costa, as always, we love having you on the show. thank you for being here. thank you. still ahead on morning joe the greatest privilege of my life to serve as vice president to the president, keeping his word to the american people. it s great to be here an celebrate this group. we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you ve given us to serve your agenda. mr. president, it s an honor to represent the men and women of the department of defense and we are grateful for the sacrifices our people are making in order to strengthen our military so our diplomats always negotiate from a position of strength. back in 2017 while trump s cabinet was lavishing praise on him and showing themselves to be sad, pathetic sycophants, general jim mattis paid his respects directly to the men and the women who serve in uniform
unilaterally and he doesn t need approval from congress or his own staff. there are times whether in the mist of the mueller investigation or not, to take the political temperature down and you shouldn t do this. that doesn t mean he won t. he is toying with something he can do regardless of legality, regardless of the perception, regardless of the bind it would put the republican party in, he s considering doing it because he thinks it will be for his political benefit. right now, the president is concerned about his reelection prospects next year. many people close to the president say part of the reason why he s acting even more irrational than usual over this past week are the growing concerns about the economy. when you look at this issue of the president building the wall, this was his key promise. this promise defined his
before we do that, let s talk about the president. it s been confirmed by another media outlet the president did actually say do whatever you need to do, if you need to be pardoned, don t worry about it, i will do that later. democrat obviously are very concerned about it as are a lot of independents and moderate republicans, yet i saw a conservative writer say yesterday, this would play very well with the republicans base. was this perhaps as offensive and undemocratic as it is, as it sounds? is this the president desperate and playing to his political base? as noted before, the white house is spinning this as simply the president offering it as a joke, lighthearted and he doesn t mean it. when he floats things, this is the excuse he uses to walk it back.
you re going to have to get the next secretary of defense to lose to isis, i m not going to do it. he handed trump his resignation letter and here we are a year or so later with the pentagon telling donald trump that isis is gaining strength. jeffrey, thanks for being with us. i ve been curious how forthcoming general mattis was going to be. i ve sat with him at dinner before. he s extraordinarily diplomatic, so i didn t expect him to go the full scaramucci, but i was wondering whether he would ease up to the line that robert gates crossed when he actually wrote an autobiography that was very frank and very revealing. yeah. that s probably the next book. he ll never go the full scaramucci, let s be clear. that s not his style or his character, however you want to phrase it.
primary. what it means for the state of the race. she says she will endorse somebody else and we will figure out who that is. plus, we re talking to another republican contender, congressman tim ryan. this shows the president hasn t built anything when it comes to the wall. the president has made border security the mainstay of his message, dating back to the campaign of build that wall and mexico will pay for it, though that last promise is long gone. despite the president s claims to the contrary, there is no new wall. same span, not new place. the total of repaired barrier is about 60 miles along that 2,000 mile border. the president also said in the tweet, the wall is going up rapidly. it is not. as we just reported, there is no new wall, only replacement for walls in need of repair or