chatting with those who have sacrificed so much but it also produced important news with respect to the taliban. the president announced and you just said the group is interested in the resumption of stalled peace talks. president trump: we re saying it has to be a cease-fire. they didn t want to do a cease-fire. now they do i believe. that s the president s perspective. previous talks that had been set for camp david in september were scrapped at the last minute. that s just ahead of further exchanges of violence and retribution. let s take you inside the numbers. currently 12,000 to 13,000 american forces still serving in afghanistan. the number is down by 2000 since last year. the president said yesterday he would like to see it reduced to 8600 and perhaps even a smaller force in the not too distant future. no surprise we don t see anything on the schedule for the president thus far. as you well know, things could
change in a moment s notice. if that happens i promise to let you know. back to you. all right, kevin, thank you. kevin corke with the president in florida. now we know why kevin couldn t get what was on the menu. let s bring in john bussey. he is the associated editor for the wall street journal and fox news contributor. john, the commander-in-chief has every right to visit the troops and the troops always appreciate the visit. each time a trip like this takes place the focus shifts to timing. the political back drop. president trump made news saying he wants to resume talks with the taliban. what is your take? yeah. the optics of this are always good for a president. we ve had a tradition of presidents going to battle areas during thanksgiving to meet with the troops and so it is for president trump. it s very good for him to be seen with the troops on a day
pretty entrenched at this point. a couple more things i want to get to in my time remaining. i want to go back to the taliban talks. will afghan president be involved in the talks? should he be involved in those talks should they resume? we haven t heard any conditions to get that diplomacy back open and if the taliban is actually going to be at the table of discussion. we don t know answers to any of those questions. as you point out the afghan president was upset that he wasn t involved in the negotiations that led to seemingly led to some kind of progress in september. we don t know whether he will be involved or what the taliban has been asked to do. we do know the president is keen on reducing forces in afghanistan, the pentagon has its own thoughts about what s needed there for security. finally i want to read a
arthel: new developments on the north korea missile tests yesterday. south korean officials were fired from a super large rocket launcher. they may soon deploy a new weapons systems as the year end deadline set by kim jong-un for nuclear talks is approaching. pyongyang threatening to abandon negotiations unless washington will make major concessions. i think the president has always been in a position where it is his to lose. based on he is bringing sort of a disruptive force into what would be called political norms. i do not see anybody in the democratic primary races today that is enough in the center where i believe most of the voters are.