president obama is watching this while traveling aboard air force one, his press secretary robert gibbs is with him. he says it is a very fluid situation, obviously. they are looking for an orderly transition to froe and fair electionses. if you heard ambassador bolton who was on with us near the top of the hour, ambassador bolton advised that the less the white house says in a situation like this the better it is for everyone. joining us jenna: joining us now kt mcfarland former deputy secretary of defense for president reagan, 0 fox news security analyst. you ve heard what we now know, we have confirmed the president is out the military is in. what is next? there are three things to watch. if the president is out, and the military is in, is the military going to basically keep the structure of government? the second thing to watch is, will there be constitutional reform? now what we ve just heard is
it is good the military will manage this transition but transition to what and how quickly? that step is still going to be very necessary. jon: democratic congressman adam smith of washington. congressman, thank you. jenna: we ll ask the congressman actually to stay with us. we have a couple more questions for him after the break. we re hearing now that the area around president mubarak s residence is on lockdown. more after the break.
that moubarak is stepping down and it s not going to trigger the constitutional requirement of elections in 60 days, for instance. but there are an awful lot of other things that have to happen with the constitution. for example political parties are illegal. there is no freedom of speech, there is no free press, there is no independent judiciary. when they had elections in egypt who monitors them? if it s the interior department are they free and open elections? then the third thing is the people you re seeing in the square, how quickly can they transition from protesting in the square to organizing politically to run in what i believe are still scheduled to be elections in september? jenna: k. t. that brings up a very important point as we were just talking about moments ago. the protesters have really not put forward a single candidate or person or even an organization that they say really is motivating it. it seems like a grass roots organized protest, but we re still looking from
a senior egyptian official confirms to fox news now that president hosni mubarak will step down shortly and transfer authority to the higher council of the armed forces. i guess you can describe this as an orderly military coup. it is essentially happening outside the constitutional framework. that s what the source has pointed out to our james rosen. under the egyptian constitution moubarak s resignation ordinarily would mean that the speaker of the house would become president and elections would be held within 60 days. in this case this military council will not be governing under the constitution or any legislation, they are going to have to define the format under which they are taking power, that is a quote from our james rosen who has been speaking to some of his sources in washington. james long at the state department has a lot of people who know what is going on there. we also come to understand that
possibly that he took his chief of staff of the army with him. there are also video of the supreme military council here meeting with a new figurehead at the head of the table. moubarak typically chairs those meetings and was not at this meeting and the military issued a report on state television saying that they had possibly taken control to safeguard the country. the question is what has happened here or has nothing happened? is moubarak still in control? is the military in control? was there a coup? was there not a coup. interesting to note days ago the vice president omar suleiman said if these protests don t stop there could be a coup. he didn t say how it would happen. it s impossible to under score how important the egyptian military is in terms of the people. the people here don t trust the police, they trust the military. we ve all seen pictures of the tanks surrounding tahrir square for the past week and a half. journalists have been heading in there, there have been tanks a