about what michael flynn was doing. so let s hypothesize here. what if we find out that the president himself knew? what 23 we find out also that the president knew exactly what was going on in that trump tower meeting with thnatalia? so what? now you have the president s team arguing that the collusion is not a crime. i see those as perhaps two issues. on the flynn stuff it was forgotten about but he s cooperating and who knows what he s telling prosecutors about his instructions from trump, his conversations with trump about russ russia. at many t minimum for the president, you seem to have a president acting prematurely in
military strikes, i want to be careful. there is a legal view. i want to stay away from the legal view. let me give you my diplomatic and national security definition on that. while i don t want to speculate or hypothesize how the negotiation might go, it s my full anticipation that however that meeting goes, there will be enormous diplomatic work yet remaining. to your point we have not yet exhausted our capacity there. i think there is an awful long way to go. the president has made clear, and i agree with him, that there may come that day. there may come the day when we see an arsenal of nuclear weapons capable of striking the united states of america. the president has made clear his intention to prevent that from happening. to the extent that diplomatic tools and other tools that america has as its foreign policy power are unsuccessful, i know secretary mattis has been directed to present to the president a set of options that will achieve the president s objective. secretary ma
i want to start with the predicate of your question. while i don t want to speculate or hypothesize on how that meeting might go, there s a lot of work remaining. i think there s an awfully long way to go. the president has made clear and i agree with him that there may come that day, there may come the day when we see an arsenal of nuclear weapons capable of striking the united states of america. the president has made clear his intention to prevent that from happening and to the extent that diplomatic tools and other tools that america has as its foreign policy power are unsuccessful, i know that secretary mattis has been directed to present to the president a set of options that will achieve the president s objective. right. secretary mattis has said we re never out of diplomatic options. and let me get your response to
inducement for them to not cooperate with an investigation? yes. i want to make clear with respect to all these reports that come out in the new york times and elsewhere, there s never detail of what the conversation actually was, what the words were in fact. so the words are key here, what words were used? yeah, there s a spectrum, right. to hypothesize, at the one end of the spectrum, if john dowd said, i hope, you know, you re doing okay. you know the president has pardon power. that s not great to say because it suggests something. but i don t think that s actionable in any way. at the other end of the spectrum, you could have someone saying, in quite blunt language that usually is not used even by somebody who doesn t always have the best judgment, the president is prepared to pardon you if you agree not to cooperate. now, i m not sure that s a fine argument anyway, just in terms of strategy because once you re pardoned, then you don t have in the same way you know, you
do with the timing. this is something that donald trump wanted to do for 30 years. there was a story, you know, back in august he was taking bring me tariffs. i want tariffs. so this isn t donald trump suddenly deciding to do this. but the timing of it, i think, you know it s really hard to say the timing isn t suspicious, right? yeah. let me get your thoughts before we go on north korea. how is this going to play in peoria? i think it will play well in peoria. look, donald trump this is a guy who i think the american people are want to see something good come out of it. they hope that maybe it s the triumph of hope over experience. but they want diplomacy to work. i do think it s fair to, you know, hypothesize that donald trump s tough talk as well as the sanctions might have driven north korea to the bargaining table. thank you all. i appreciate it. when we come back, president trump s porn star problem not