interests but spent most of the time lambasting allies and criticizing them, they need to be criticized because of lack of defense spending but they need to go to the summit with having the allies back and ensuring he had their back. and the kind of negotiating leverage to showcase to vladimir putin that nato is strong and will come to russia. i went to hear from you about something that in the third and final presidential debate hillary clinton charged that donald trump was going to be trying to split up the nato alliance because she alleged that is what vladimir putin once and the trump administration if elected would try to move forward with that. what does the president need to do in terms of sending a signal to our allies at this news conference after the summit to make it clear he still stands
without putting it behind him. the further problem is legal. that s if you force mueller to issue the subpoena, you litigate the subpoena and you lose, then all of your negotiating leverage disappears. the reason is president has negotiating leverage right now is that he can threaten as his lawyers are doing, to refuse to appear for an interview and to litigate against and fight a subpoena. the moment you litigate and fight against the subpoena and the courts rule against you, you lose the ability to make that threat. okay. let s move now to the president s upcoming supreme court justice announcement on monday night. if he s going by the gorsuch model, what does that tell you about the person he eventually picks. is that more about the vetting process and roll out? we know at least one of the candidates was also an anthony kennedy clerk as was gorsuch.
legal team and mueller s legal team, and it all comes down to whether the special counsel will or will not issue a subpoena for the president s grand jury testimony which would provoke a significant confrontation on litigation. that question we don t know the answer to, because we don t know how much mueller really needs this interview or whether it s just something he would like to have but at the end of the day is willing to proceed without. yeah. from a pr strategy, you point out that while this might help the president in the court of public opinion, you re also saying the more this drags on, the more the president loses his negotiating leverage. explain that. well, time is not on the president s side here in the sense that if you re the president of the united states and you have a major criminal investigation against you, you want to have it resolved. and the longer this drags on, the longer president trump goes
they re going to get rid of their nukes and we re going to make them rich. and so far now, the tone is that well, you know, because he has to. what negotiating leverage does he have if kim knows he s so desperate for a deal. i m hearing one word, unilateral. i m hearing no unilateral. what do they want from us? what do the north koreans. what do they want from us and south korea? do they want to take our umbrella and troops from south korea which are basically the trip wire? we keep our troops there so if they attack our troops, we bring in the big bombs. do they want us to clear out of the dmz? is he going to pull that on us the first day. what they actually want from us and what they re sort of currently demanding, some of that what they re demanding is tough for a show of force in their own country or for leverage or to have an excuse
dealing with this regime. it s on and off and a guessing game for kim. maybe this is his own art of the deal. how do you read it now? that s right. if you look at that the chinese were able to extract from president trump in his public tweet on sunday about zte getting him to reverse a commerce department ruling from last month i think you see the north koreans working closely with the chinese. look at that and say boy, maybe it might be time for us to try to extract some concessions as well. there is no question that the united states was always intending to continue these exercises with the south koreans. that was something the south korean ambassador said when the proposed summit was first announced, there is no question here this is definitely the north koreans trying to make a little trouble and put some public pressure on donald trump. bill: you re right. the military exercise on the schedule for some time. they do drills all the time.