syria. the bilateral meeting with the president and president xi jinping, that is the last we will hear of donald trump at the g 20. it would be great to hear more from him but that is what they decide. david: terrific reporting this whole week. to kirk liphold, former commander in the u.s. navy and former commander of the uss cole. let s talk about what the president has done. it is extraordinary that his two trips abroad, all the media, mainstream media was worried whether he would be the trump from his tweets or a man of state. he has done this country well, whether he comported himself but what he is bringing home, jobs, various trade deals etc.. when you look at what the
i want to talk to kirk liphold about this. this is deemed that a provocative act that would agitate the chinese and the north koreans as if what the north koreans have been doing as of late with escalating the weekly tests more in the past year than we ve seen in the past ten years. what do you think of this? you have a difficult situation. obviously the koreans elected a liberal government and the defense has negotiated with the united states for this thad battery to come in. the chinese are worried it could look into china and disrupt things. the problem is now it has to be settled government to government rather than military to military. we need to have thad there. it is incumbent on us to ensure that we re sending a strong signal. north korea, yes. more importantly to china. they re the ones that aided and
kirk liphold is with us now. seems to me we re not backing down. president trump seems to be taking a more forward approach. the carrier is there, the missile defense is there. the joint exercises are there. this is a new approach, isn t it, from president trump? actually it s not, stuart. we ve had this routine exercise we ve done for years with the aircraft carrier and the rest of the ships to be there and conduct this exercise with south korea. it s routine. so the fact that north korea is wants to do these merciless attacks on us, that s the same language that we hear every time. didn t we move a missile defense system right in there and we have not done that before? that s a forward approach, isn t it? very much so. that s sending strong signal, not just to north korea but to the chinese as well.
be? steve: kirk liphold was the officer of the uss cole. he joins us now. good morning, commander. good morning. glad to be on. brian: they just buzzed our destroyer again with one of their fighter jets. what do you do from here? number one, if you were the commanding of that destroyer, what would you do? well, i think what we re seeing is the trump administration is being quietly challenged in many cases not so quietly by the russians and learning they are not quite the allies that they thought they were. you now have very strong signals being sent. the deployment of the intelligence ship that is a ship that unlike the soviet a.g.i.s that use to parole off our coast this one is designed to collect intelligence. here to send a signal forward deploy. missile deployment great concern not only to the united states but especially nato in europe because they are the ones that live with the employment of that first and foremost. and when you look at all the other things they are doing,
syria, iran reportedly is threatening retaliation in the form of an attack on u.s. embassy in iraq, and that s not the only potential danger for americans. our brian todd is looking at that. good evening, brian. good evening, joe. you know, we ve been speaking with security experts about the spectrum of possible retaliation, and when you look at this as a whole, americans in the region could be vulnerable to a range of attacks from terrorism to mob violence to a conventional military strike. if american tomahawk missiles fly towards syria in the coming days, what about the blowback? i think the united states needs to be prepared for syria to respond to an attack. one of the things that they have available to them are russian missiles. reporter: commander kirk liphold knows what it s like to be in harm s way. he commanded the uss cole, hit by terrorists in 2000. syria s hezbollah hit this israeli ship with a missile in 2006. top u.s. commanders say american ships will keep a saf