that has emboldened assad. that action as the senator tweeted over the weekend is what embolded assad and russia to commit war crimes here. jenna, how do you see that? the president has made no secret that he doesn t want to be involved in syria. he s called assad a bad guy, you he has made clear over and over again this is a problem that he wants to just leave to russia. someone else should deal with it other than him. a year ago he saw images quite similar to the ones we re seeing this week of children suffering. yeah. and according to people close to him, that moved him to take action. it was one strike, it sent a clear message at that one moment. and then the president went back to just not wanting to get involved in syria, not wanting to confront assad. and that s where we re at again today. right. where you have more reports of chemical attacks and a president who just doesn t want to get dragged in there. so we know that the president
year, given what he s now tweeted about this big price to pay, does he have any recourse other than to take military action now even if it is just a pin pick strike? i think he s put himself in a very difficult position. and the major reason he did that is because he has no strategy in the middle east. we don t know what the objectives are and what he s trying to achieve. he says we ve taken care of isis, time to get out then we see a chemical strike. so, yes, i think is he pushed up against the wall to take significant a action, not just a pin pick. but as i think doug will probably point out, this creates its own set of problems. one takes this kind of credible threat, a forced triek to try to get people to a negotiating table to find a political settlement here because there is no military solution in syria. doug. well, there s certainly no military solution and syria has been putting people in boxes for some time now. donald trump with his great strike, but we can look at p
pruitt is a different creature. there s still talk about moving him into jeff session s role at some point. so clearly is not soured on pruitt the way others in the party have. but explain to met difference here. there s the difference which you talk about is policy, right? because i think back to tom price at hhs and the president specifically cited the optics of what price was doing with the pricey talf, et cetera, et cetera. the oipt ticks for pruitt aren t great either the difference teams sooems to be the policy. pruitt is killing it, slated over the epa but on the ethics piece, senator rounds had an interesting discussion with chuck todd over the weekend and i want to play you a bit because i want to see what you think. do you think he should still be epa administrator? i do. why? because he s following through with the policies that the president said he wanted to implement. what ethics matter, though? because tom price did less and was fired? look, the reason why
so working with our allies and partners from nato to cutter and elsewhere we re going to address this issue. you can rule out taking action launching air strikes against assad, mr. secretary? i don t rule out anything right now. thank you very much. reporter: that wasn t captured on camera but he was asked if he could confirm that the assad regime was behind the attack and he shook his head no. so at this point we expect that president trump will be presented with certainly more options today. he s got that cabinet meeting you mentioned. he also has a meeting with senior military leaders. as you pointed out, it s also john bolton s first day n aught job as national security adviser. so that s a die ma amic that we rech wag as well. as we wait to learn more about the trump administration s response, the president said he was morally just fooid fied last year in launching a military attack of assad s military after they used chemical weapons against civilians. but there are those t