negotiating table. if iran thinks it can democrat to the world that it s able to take advantage of the united states, that it s able to attack and destroy one of our drones without any consequence or the only consequence being we now ask to speak to them, i think that s very dangerous. trump s defense department lacks permanent senior leadership. take a look at the chaos that exists within this administration. take a look at the fact the entire leadership of the department of defense is turning over. reporter: sources say trump is expected to ferm e pepermane mark esper as defense secretary. we have another major update on immigration. days after president trump
representatives of the joints chief of staff the nature of the operation and how many people would be killed? that s not laj cogical. that s not kredsabcredible. each option was accompanied by risk and risk mitigation. that s how the plan the missions in terms of what packages you ll put it on as well as the time of day to try to minimize casualties. maybe he didn t pay attention. maybe he didn t ask the right questions. i m glad he considered it, if he did consider that in his decision to pull back the strike but i can guarantee you that the pentagon was briefing casualties as a possibility from the very beginning. sg wh what does this say about the president s decision making process? our sources are telling the president was briefed on this earlier in the day but he may not have internalized it until the very last moment, at least for him where he really understood what 150 casualties would mean in this context.
military force for 2001. we don t know enough to assess the legal basis for a strike. let s move on. democrats are now struggling to unite around impeachment, oo possible impeachment procedure and they ve had trouble come be compelling cooperation as they push forward with the probes into the president. are democrats dealing from a position of weakness? well, look, at the end of the day, impeachment is a political decision. it s charged. congress is charged with making that decision to impeach the president and send it over to the senate for a trial. what has happened so far is that the democrats have simply failed to get the public to support what would be a political decision and so that s where we are right now p. tell a story to explain to the american people what happened
tonight just hours after he abruptly called off retaliatory strikes. a senior administration official says the president is now refocusing in on substantiation sanctions instead of military action even though there s no evidence that any new sanctions actually are in the works. it s all raising more questions about why mr. trump ordered the strikes in the suddenly pulled back. the president claims he didn t learn about the estimated casualties until the mission was about to be launched deciding 150 deaths were not appropriate, not proportionate for an attack on an unmanned drone. i ll talk to republican congressman who is a member of the foreign affairs committee and our correspondents and analysts are standing by.
pressure iran but so far it hasn t resulted in iran coming to the negotiating table. the president talking about increasing sanctions. no evidence yet that that has actually happened. he has stepped back from military force deciding to not move ahead. deciding the estimates of iranian casualties that might have been manning the three missile battery stations that were on the target list. he didn t feel comfortable with that. the u.s. military, to be blunt, is pretty much taking a deep breath right now that he has not gone to war against iran because it remains the bottom line fact, the u.s. military has said if there were strikes against iran, they just cannot predict what iran s reaction would be. wolf. fred, you re there. the iranians are saying they