by houthis started in mid november in protest, houthis say, of israel s war in gaza. drone and missile strikes from yemen in container ships transiting into the red sea through the suez canal. this has hindered container traffic through the red sea. most are diverted around the cape of good hope, south africa, according to industry standards, which addsthsands of miles. they re saying the suez canal doesn t really work, straining a still recovering world economy. this is gabe gutierrez, the senior white house correspondent. he joins me now. what do we know? hi there, chris. as you said, the stakes are incredibly high around the world. president biden just released a statement saying more than 2000 ships so far have been forced to divert from the red sea. we re getting a video of one of these airstrikes tonight and are also hearing from senior administration officials who are saying that these strikes the intent was not to escalate the situation but rather to
them. among their favourite slogans this death to america and death to israel. they want to be in this fight, ithink, and being threatened by the west is almost something that i think they want to show to their people, look what we are doing, we are still fighting them. they are allies of iran. they are not proxies of iran. they are not directed from tehran, but they are helped out, they get the weapons from tehran, and i think it s in the interests at the moment of both countries to keep this pressure up to and from the us and the uk point of view one thing they are concerned about is that they ve been accused especially the americans in recent weeks of when they are under pressure red lines turn pink. they want to show that their red lines are really deep red. you mentioned the houthi slogan there. how much is all this connected to what s going on with israel and hamas is yellow it s absolutely connected to it is what the houthis say. they have got involved in this and they ve tried
making stuff up. that just hurts your heart as a military professional. you can t conceive of that. secondly, at the strategic level, what this does, and this is what would keep me awake at night if i were an israeli in my bed, is that deterrence is shattered. the opponents see this weakness. hezbollah says, hmm. the houthis say, hmm. iran says, hmm. deterrence, if not shattered, is deeply weakened here. those are big concerns. the u.s. needs to stand with israel in this time, but we have a very troubled partner leading that nation. retired admiral james stavridis, thank you very much for coming on. happy new year. we re glad to have you this coming year in the months to come as we cover this story and this question. still ahead on morning joe, former trump staffers echo warnings and concerns over the
this and choke it away. they should have kneeled it and didn t, tried to run it, but they outlast texas. it was a nail biter to the end. can we say, can we not, the committee, after all the consternation about florida state and everything else, got it right here? these are the two best teams? i think so. i will stipulate, i was watching last night thinking, i still think georgia would beat all these teams. that s a conversation for another day. georgia would love to have it. i mean, florida, the state of florida would like to have it less because they got blown out by 50, i believe. 60. excuse me. all the votes have been counted. blown out by 60. it s embarrassing for fsu. they threatened legislation because they were left out of this. georgia lost to alabama, can t complain too much. i think they got it right. the political system, i dare say, worked. there we go. quick nfl. man, the baltimore ravens look good. lamar jackson probably the mvp, i think. yes. he led my