it wasn t a surprise to me. i don t flow know if that s thet time he said it before. not as explicitly is the point people are making. it wasn t surprising. i want to talk to you about trade. it s a very big deal for your state. it s a very big deal for you. the president is considering raising the stakes in the trade war with china even further. here is what he said this week about that during a rally. listen. china had others remember this have targeted our farmers. not good. not nice. you know what our farmers are saying? it s okay. we can take it. these are incredible people. we can take it. he is saying that farmers i don t know don t think it s a big deal, farmers say they can take it. that s not what i m hearing from farmers we have interviewed. do you agree with him? i think the community is split. i will be at the ag breakfast
senator, thank you so much for coming on the show. we want to get back to the breaking news that you heard referenced there, the supreme court dealing out that blow to public sector unions on its final day of the session. ruling that state government workers who choose not to join a union cannot be forced to pay union dues. that was the last big decision that we were waiting on. but there is something else that might have national implications also, not a ruling, but possibly a retirement. joining me now is harry lippman, somebody who also clerked for justice anthony kennedy. thank you for being with you. let me start with your reaction first this union decision, this ruling by the supreme court again not a surprise. what do you make of it? it wasn t a surprise, but it was a 5-4 decision by the so-called conservative block and it overruled a liberal landmark decision. so it showed the court kind of
bad idea, it created more bureaucracy and whatnot. a couple days ago, president trump stood up at a meeting and looked at general dunford and said, i d like you to please create another branch called the space force. another create another branch called the space force. another one was the decision on the u.s. withdrawing from the iran deal. it wasn t a surprise. there was speculation in the media in a president trump was going to pull the u.s. out of it. when he made the decision he made and it didn t call secretary mattis until the secretary called the white house to find out what the decision ultimately was going to be. there are a number of decisions here. the thing that s interesting to me about it is we don t have any indication that president trump is upset with secretary mattis or getting ready to fire him. he just doesn t seem to be listening to him. in fact, he is listening more to his new national security adviser john bolton and new secretary of state mike pompeo. bolton
south korea and north korea, let s bring in our panel. jonathan swann, national political reporter for x euros. katie pavlich, news editor at townhall.com. and charles lane, opinion editor for the washington post. it wasn t a surprise, it may be was a surprise how it was rolled out, but the president has talked about wanting to do this for quite some time. the question is whether it is going to be as big as they say it is. biggest essay it is in terms of the consequences with republicans in the chamber of congress are running about or whether the president is going to water down some of the things that he put on the table initially and if you look at the way that is negotiated, he tends to do that. the language that he used today in his initial opening line at the white house during his event with the steelworkers behind him, when he talked about this being about flexibility in cooperation with our true friends, both in terms of national security, trade, and our military bases, tha
council or officially reporting. so carol, first, let s just talk about that last item first. obviously when h.r. mcmaster came in as national security adviser, he had known that, did he not, that kushner was the de facto secretary of state in just about everything else in the transition? absolutely. he knew that he was not only the president s son-in-law but very much the trusted hand, a person during the transition who had been given the portfolio of meeting with foreign officials. it wasn t a surprise that jared kushner would also want to continue doing that in the beginning days of the administration. what was unusual and quite surprising to the national security adviser was that jared kushner wasn t following the normal protocol. it s one thing to say he didn t coordinate with the national security council. that s correct. he also didn t he also had some solo, sort of freelance calls where he didn t get a briefing beforehand, which could have been useful to him in talking to