away. jeff zeleny, thank you very much in germany for us. and we re going to keep our eye on a lot of these pictures here. there is definitely some substance from the president s trip. we heard are him earlier call out his predecessor. he called out the u.s. smejs community and the american media on foreign soil. he refused to condemn the russians for meddling in the election, and even once again suggested no one knows for sure who interfered despite what his own intelligence chiefs say. the president also warned of severe options against north korea for its missile launch, so let s have a big conversation about all of the above. mitchell reese, former negotiator on the north korean nuclear crisis is with us, who spent more time in talks with north korea than any other u.s. official. so mitchell, welcome. also laura rosenberger, who served in the state department under president george w. bush and the national security
and also we need to be asking bigger questions about, well, what about the elections moving forward. you know, mitchell, back over to you, to laura s point about the logical disconnect, going into this meeting tomorrow with vladimir putin and we know he has just met with chancellor merkel, he s meeting with xi. how much of a message is muddled going into these meetings for him in terms of what america really stands for? well, certainly his public statements lead one to believe that he doesn t quite grasp the seriousness that laura mentioned, interference with our sovereignty and our most sacred duty, which is voting in a presidential election. what he says in private, though, may be very different and we re not privy to that yet. i know i have confidence that he ll be briefed properly about the talking points he should raise with mr. putin and i hope he delivers them forcefully about russian interference. not just in the past but
understand. mitchell, same question to you. what did you think? i think the president s tweets demonstrate his frustration with what he thought was going to be a quick foreign policy victory on north korea and his disappointment that the chinese haven t delivered, that he hoped, on the promises that he heard early on in his administration. so i think that he s ramping up the learning curve that every president has done for the past 30 years is that north korea is a real policy dilemma. because we have very limited options. laura, to you. we know that president trump, as i mentioned, also went after your former boss, his predecessor, president obama, saying he, president obama, choked in response to the russia influencing the elections and the lead-up to it and yes officials have questioned how the administration handled the response, but a bit of nuance here. a big reason obama didn t act was because trump was saying the election was rigged. yeah. that s absolutely right. and i
how vulnerable she was to that form of intimidation. so, mitchell, what do you think, knowing that, what do you think vladimir putin could do, might do, with president trump? well, i think vladimir putin s got to be very pleased with what he s already done, and more of the same, i think, would be in his interest. he has dominated the debate because of the interference in our election last year. he has caused a great uncertainty at the most senior levels because of an investigation that s now ongoing that is going to handicap the trump administration for many months to come. he s raised doubts along with the president s own statements about our commitment to our allies. and our fortitude towards our a adversaries, so i think right now, things are going okay from his perspective with the president. fortunately, congress has pushed back, and they re playing their
ballistic missile capabilities. there s more sanctions, more intradictions, there s measures that we can take and a policy of denial and deterrence is the best way forward for the trump administration. if we want to question the premise of the question and we say he doesn t want to attack the u.s., at the end of the day, what does kim jong un want? i think fundamentally he wants to survive. he wants to make sure that his regime continues. it s a family diynasty. it was founded by his father and grandfather and now him and he s a young man and we know that he likes the good life. we know that he drinks good whiskey. he eats. he s gained weight in recent years perhaps because of the anxiety of being the leader but we know that he wants to wake up in his own bed tomorrow so there are things that we can communicate, need to communicate to him about what he can and can t do. and we need to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies to make sure that he can t divide us. deterrence can wo